Ukrainians can now check a free live map of where Russian attack targets are flying, a Ukrainian air-threat monitoring project called monitor announced on X on 13 October. The beta pulls public reports of drones in flight into a single view and lays them over official air raid alerts.

Russia now flies jet-powered drones, and some switch off their engines before an attack and glide in. Over a hundred drones can arrive in one night. Yet since September, drone-only yellow alerts in some Oblasts no longer shut everything down. So during drone alerts, some Ukrainians now stay at their desks rather than in shelters. The new maps offers them a quick look at the sky from a phone, even on a weak signal.

What the map shows

The launch post described the service as one that tries to show where each target is, using open sources and algorithmic processing. It said the beta focuses on drones, with other targets to follow.

The drone data does not come from radar. The service draws on regional Telegram channels that post where drones and missiles are flying over their own oblasts. It cross-checks those posts to estimate what each target is, roughly where it is, and where it is heading, the project explains. The same page already lists cruise and ballistic missiles among the targets. It also says the map is free, ad-free, and needs no registration, and that it runs in a browser or on Telegram, designed to work on a phone with a weak signal.

A target log lists each drone’s district and course. Alert data comes from alerts.in.ua, and areas under alert turn red or yellow. The map refreshes about every 20 seconds while targets are airborne.

However, the developers warn that the dots are only estimates and show up late. Some targets slip through untracked. That is why “an empty map does not mean you are safe,” they wrote. When sirens sound, they urge people to rely on official signals and take shelter.

On 17 October, the Defense Ministry said that Ukraine’s Air Alert app now maps the approximate position and heading of some targets. These include cruise missiles, Banderol drone-launched missiles, and Shahed-type drones. The data comes straight from the Air Force over secure channels.

For security reasons, it carries no exact coordinates or real-time tracking and may lag. Ballistic missiles and anything faster than 2,000 km/h don’t appear at all. The ministry’s advice matches monitor’s: get to a shelter first, then check the map from there.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on 20 October that he had spoken with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio about ballistic missile interceptors, early warning of Russian launches, and “the situation with Starlink/Starshield, which needs to be restored,” he wrote on X. He thanked Rubio for “his readiness to help and his clear position” and said they would speak again soon. A day earlier, he had told US senators how each of those supplies had stalled.

This comes as the US presses Kyiv to stop its strikes on Russian oil refineries, which Trump has blamed for high fuel prices at home, and Zelenskyy counts the Starlink slowdown among the steps he says look like an effort to push Ukraine to capitulate. Ukraine’s interceptor drones depend on the service to hunt Russia’s jet-powered Shaheds, and Kyiv says they now lose the link at speeds too low to catch them. The call appears not to have settled whether that cap is gone. If it stays, Ukrainian cities could face Russia’s drone waves this winter with one fewer means to stop them, as Russia keeps striking the grid.

On 17 October, Rubio told reporters that nobody in the US ordered Starlink slowed, that the slowdown “wasn’t deliberate,” and that “my understanding is it’s been restored.” He drew a line between the two services. Ukraine’s drones, he said, ran on commercial Starlink, while Starshield, the military version, is not available to Ukraine. Kyiv has asked for it to carry out strikes deep inside Russia, and that request is under discussion, he said.

The next day, Zelenskyy told Bloomberg that Starlink in Ukraine cuts out above 161 km/h, and Kyiv says its Starshield terminals are capped as well. His post after the call still says the service needs to be restored.

Reuters’ sources point to the White House. Washington denies it

The order to slow Starshield came from inside the White House, Reuters reported, citing two US officials and a Western official. They described it as the Starshield service for the Ukrainian military, the version Rubio says Ukraine does not have. A senior Ukrainian official told Reuters that Kyiv had been told it was a White House decision. A senior US official told the agency the president never made such a request, and the White House did not answer whether other officials had. Rubio called a report that the White House ordered Starlink slowed “categorically false.”

Missile warnings and Patriots are also in dispute

Overnight on 18–19 October, Ukraine got no partner warning before the first of two Russian ballistic waves, Air Force spokesman Yurii Ihnat said on the national telethon. That came hours after Zelenskyy said US warnings had resumed. On 19 October, Rubio pushed back against suggestions of a pause in US intelligence sharing, AFP reported.

Zelenskyy also told Bloomberg the US sends only 12 Patriot interceptors a month and has authorized only part of those “we have paid for” under PURL. Ukrainian officials told the Kyiv Independent that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has not signed the contracts. A US government official called those claims “not true.”