SpaceX chief Elon Musk says the version of Starlink that Ukraine’s military uses, StarShield, is owned and controlled by the US government rather than by his company. His claims come amid a storm over Ukrainian reports that a speed cut had broken their frontline operations.

Ukraine’s drones and air defenses rely on Starlink to steer and strike, so a limit on the network hits combat directly. Ukrainian troops reported that overnight into 14 October, the faster military package they depend on was throttled, halting a series of missions. Musk’s answer shifts the decision and the blame from SpaceX to the US government and, ultimately, to the president.

“Any limits on speed or usage are decided by the US military and ultimately POTUS. StarShield systems are owned and controlled by the US government,” Musk says.

He draws a line between the two services. Ordinary Starlink is a commercial product owned by SpaceX, limited to civilian or defensive use and not for offensive military action, which he called inappropriate for a commercial company.

Their conversation took place the same week that Washington pressured Kyiv over its strikes on Russian oil refineries amid US President Donald Trump's diesel deal with Moscow.

The exchange that forced Musk to answer

The statement followed a direct appeal. Former Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov told Musk on X that Starlink connectivity at speeds of up to 160 km/h was being restored, and pressed for more.

“Removing StarShield’s speed limit entirely is now critical for Ukraine’s defense. Thank you, Elon Musk. We hope for your continued support,” Fedorov wrote, framing the cap as a direct constraint on the war.

The faster package Ukraine cannot do without

The ordinary Starlink Mini mounted on drones is capped at about 160 km/h, which is too slow for some missions, so faster flight requires access to the military version, StarShield, Ukrainska Pravda notes. Ukraine has used StarShield since 2024.

Washington is pressing the victim, not the aggressor, a Ukrainian diplomat says. President Donald Trump is using the threat of cutting military aid and intelligence as a tool to pressure Ukraine, while failing to apply enough pressure on Russia to stop the war, says Oleksandr Khara, executive director of the Center for Defense Strategies, Espreso reports.

Ukraine’s drones and air defense still lean on US satellite intelligence and weapons, which gives Trump room to squeeze Kyiv rather than Moscow. Khara argues Trump wants to end the war on Ukraine’s and Europe’s account to restore normal relations with Russian ruler Vladimir Putin, treating Ukraine as the weak link to be pushed.

“Trump wants to use restrictions, levers of influence on Ukraine to achieve his goal. To end or stop this war at any cost, at the expense of Ukraine and Europe, to restore normal relations with Putin,” Khara said.

Using American aid as leverage over Kyiv is not new for Trump, the diplomat noted, recalling earlier instances in which support was blocked or suspended.

The pressure points Trump picks, and the ones he leaves alone

Trump wants a visible success in ending the war, Khara says, partly against the backdrop of US domestic politics. He has economic tools to press Moscow but is in no hurry to use them, and his administration is instead gradually loosening sanctions on Russia.

“He doesn’t want to pressure Russia. He thinks Ukraine is the weak link and that it needs to be pushed,” Khara stressed.

Ukraine’s dependence on US support has fallen thanks to European partners, he added, so Kyiv has more room to keep fighting even as European states keep buying American weapons for it.

The one trade Kyiv might accept, and the pressure until then

An energy ceasefire is possible only on strict terms, Khara believes. Kyiv could agree to stop striking Russian refineries only if Moscow halts attacks on Ukraine’s power generation and transmission, heating, and the Black Sea ports and the ships heading to them.

Until such a deal exists, Ukraine must hit harder, he argued, because steadily draining Russia’s economic resources is what could force the Kremlin to reconsider.

“As long as there is no such agreement, and no desire from Russia, we must increase this pressure and destroy as much of their energy infrastructure as possible,” Khara said.

US Senator Richard Blumenthal, a co-author of the Russia sanctions law named after Lindsey Graham, has issued a sharp statement on the latest developments in Ukraine. He says that President Donald Trump and SpaceX chief Elon Musk should be held accountable for reported Starlink failures that could cripple Ukraine’s defense.

On 14 October, Ukraine’s military reported a Starlink disruption that halted its operations. It happened at the same time the country’s air defense stopped receiving intelligence on a Russian ballistic strike that killed three people in Kyiv. Both failures came right after the US struck a diesel deal with Russia, letting low volumes of fuel into global markets and America while pressure grew on Ukraine to stop hitting the Russian oil refineries that raise the cost of the war.

"Reports of Starlink failing in Ukraine are deeply alarming— potentially crippling air defense against Russia’s murderous missiles & drones. Trump & Musk must be held accountable," he says.

When the network falters, the war feels it

The alarm rests on how completely Ukraine leans on the system. SpaceX has reportedly throttled the StarShield military package Ukrainian drones use, with connections dropping once the drones move at speed, and breaking a series of missions.

Ukraine neither owns nor controls Starlink, and the latest limits revived long-running fears that its battlefield lifeline can be dialed down from outside the country.

Blumenthal’s demand sits inside a broader revolt in Congress. A bipartisan group of 12 senators wrote Trump on 13 October urging him to rescind his deal letting Russian diesel back to market, calling the Treasury’s General License No. 135 a gift to Moscow that should be withdrawn.

They pressed him instead to use the Graham-Leach-Bliley Act he signed in September to squeeze Russia and its enablers, above all, China.

"If there's one lesson from Trump's mindless warmongering, it's that we need to break our dependence on foreign imports of fossil fuels & embrace alternate sources of energy," he said.

One of Ukraine’s most prominent drone volunteers, Serhii Sternenko, says that Starlink terminals have been restricted overnight, with connectivity beginning to drop out at speeds exceeding 160 km/h. As a result, several critical missions were disrupted.

Sternenko heads a charitable foundation that has purchased 291,502 FPV drones, which have helped the Ukrainian military shoot down more than 12,954 aerial targets. He has also served as an adviser within the team of former Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov.

Sternenko suggests that SpaceX may have introduced the restrictions at the request of the Trump administration. He adds that Ukraine had refrained from striking Russian oil refineries and energy infrastructure in recent days, as Trump had requested.

“But Trump was looking for any opportunity to undermine our defense capabilities, and he did so despite the fact that we had complied with his demands,” Sternenko says.

The limit landed the same night Russian ballistic missiles struck Kyiv’s Desnianskyi district, killing three women and injuring 24, including a seven-year-old girl.

Rescuers evacuated people covered in blood

The strike on a nine-story residential building set it ablaze, burning out apartments from the first floor to the ninth, with rescuers pulling bloodied residents from the flames and leaving survivors without power, water, or gas, according to Suspilne.

During the night’s first ballistic launches, partners did not alert Ukraine, but for the three later waves the warnings did come through, Air Force communications chief Yurii Ihnat says. The cause of the first lapse is still being established, per Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.

The early warnings help Ukrainian civilians quickly find a place to hide from such strikes, leaving up to 3 minutes to do so. Without it, people are left entirely helpless in the face of the aggression.

Further Starlink restrictions have reportedly been introduced

Later, Sternenko wrote that reports were "coming in from military personnel that restrictions on the use of Starlink satellite communications terminals for our operations have just been tightened.

"The speed at which the connection starts dropping out is now 60–70 km/h,” he added.

Poland’s Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski has publicly criticized SpaceX chief Elon Musk over the latest disruptions in Starlink's operation in Ukraine. Poland is the largest supplier of Ukraine’s terminals, having provided about 29,500, roughly half the network. It also has a Starlink ground station in Wola Krobowska that provides connectivity for much of Central and Eastern Europe, including Ukraine, RMF24 reports.

On 13 October, SpaceX imposed a 100 mph (160 km/h) speed limit on the StarShield military package that Ukrainian forces use, disrupting drone missions without warning. Poland, which pays about $50 million a year for Ukraine’s Starlink terminals, told Musk it is watching.

“Hey, @elonmusk, big man, are you playing politics with your products again? As your European customers, we are watching you,” Sikorski wrote on X.

The “big man” jab echoed their 2025 clash, when Musk told Sikorski to “be quiet, small man” after the minister noted that Warsaw, not SpaceX as charity, pays for the service.

Be quiet, small man.

You pay a tiny fraction of the cost.

And there is no substitute for Starlink.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 9, 2025

Meanwhile, presidential adviser Serhii “Flash” Beskrestnov said that this could not be a coincidence and was most likely tied to the current political situation.

When a drone outruns its own signal

The cap bites exactly where Ukraine’s drones do their work. The StarShield package had previously carried no data speed limit, and the change directly affected drones that use Starlink to steer in flight, the 7th Air Assault Corps said.

“During flights, the connection could drop for 10 to 20 seconds at speeds of just 110 to 120 kilometers per hour. The drones kept moving, but these interruptions made them harder to control,” the corps said, describing problems that now start well below the new ceiling.

A dependence Kyiv has feared for years. The limit revives an old worry. Ukraine neither owns nor controls Starlink, and the restriction follows fresh fears of a shutdown after Musk backed US President Donald Trump’s call for Zelenskyy to resign.

Russian forces struck several districts of Kyiv late on 12 October with what the Air Force called, by preliminary data, six ballistic missiles. For once, the air-raid alert reached people only after the attack had begun, Ukraine’s Air Force reported.

Reports of Russian ballistic launches are part of the intelligence the US shares with Ukraine, and that data is what lets sirens sound before the missiles arrive, giving civilians a few minutes to hide. Those minutes save lives, which is why the warning gap landed hard amid fears that Washington could cut Ukraine off from such intelligence amid US President Donald Trump's agreement with Russia to let its diesel into the US.

The alert came late because Ukraine’s radar detected the ballistic targets only during the attack, with no advance data on launches from Russian territory, according to the Air Force.

“No information was received about launches from enemy territory. The causes are being established,” the Air Force said.

The stakes are human, presidential adviser Serhii Beskrestnov, known as Flash, stressed.

“This information is needed first of all by civilians, so that people have time to hide in a shelter,” he said.

Beskrestnov says he does not want to believe the US would leave Ukraine without that data because it is a matter of civilian survival. He urged caution on the cause, saying there were nuances and that it was too early to draw conclusions.

When the sirens fall behind the missiles

However, Ukraine usually sees the launches first. The warning system normally flags Russian ballistic launches before the missiles reach their targets, giving people time to move, but on 12 October, that did not happen, the Air Force noted.

Beskrestnov later added a note of doubt about what flew. The suspected S-400 missiles were not being recorded by partners’ intelligence services, he wrote, stopping short of blaming the lapse on a loss of US data.

Two cities hit within the same hour

The damage in Kyiv was concrete. A missile struck a transport-infrastructure site in the Dniprovskyi district, and another hit a four-story warehouse in the Desnianskyi district, Mayor Vitali Klitschko said.

Russia struck Kharkiv at about the same time with nine S-8000 Banderol loitering munitions, Mayor Ihor Terekhov reported. One of the last strikes hit a residential building, where people may be trapped under the rubble and a fire is burning.

“Very serious destruction, an entire stairwell collapsed,” Terekhov said.

Three weeks before the US elections, the American right has a new villain for high fuel prices: Ukraine. Ukrainian journalist in the US, Ostap Yarysh, says the MAGA wing of US conservatives is pushing a claim that Ukraine deliberately strikes Russian oil refineries to raise fuel prices, trick US President Donald Trump, and help the Democratic Party before the November congressional vote.

The accusation casts Kyiv’s refinery strikes as a planned political move against Republicans, and it has spread from anonymous social media accounts to national television and members of Congress, Yarysh notes. Yet experts tie the fuel-price spike mainly to the US war with Iran, and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, not to Ukraine, and even Russia’s promised 300,000 tons of diesel would barely cover a day's US demand.

The messaging runs through influential American figures. Utah Senator Mike Lee wrote on X that “Zelenskyy is working overtime. To help Democrats in November.”

Zelenskyy is working overtime.

To help Democrats in November. https://t.co/HTvapB5Wt3

— Mike Lee (@BasedMikeLee) October 10, 2026

Fox News host Rachel Campos-Duffy called Zelenskyy ungrateful for continuing to bomb refineries and complicate the president’s position before the midterms, according to Yarysh’s account.

Blogger Jack Posobiec, who has a multimillion audience, has urged Washington to immediately stop sharing intelligence with Ukraine and cut off its funding, framing the strikes as an attempt to hurt Trump before the vote.

When you cannot fix the problem, try to control the story

Yarysh reads the campaign as damage control. The Republicans’ weak position before the vote stems mainly from the economy and a jump in domestic fuel prices, he says, a problem the promised Russian diesel cannot solve.

Blaming Ukraine serves two purposes, Yarysh argues: it channels voter anger toward an outside culprit, and it gives Trump a ready explanation if Republicans lose in November, that Zelenskyy set him up to help the Democrats.

Not everyone on the right is buying the blame

Even inside MAGA, some push back on that rhetoric. Yarysh points to far-right activist Laura Loomer, who argued that buying Russian oil fills the coffers of Iran’s regime, which she said "chants death to America."

Buying Russian oil puts money back into the coffers of the Islamic regime of Iran that chants Death to America.

We know this.

— Laura Loomer (@LauraLoomer) October 11, 2026

With three weeks to the vote, Yarysh warns that Ukraine should expect many more such accusations, as the information attack is likely to intensify rather than fade before election day.

Russian sabotage assaults on Europe should end with more weapons flowing to Ukraine, NATO’s top commander in Europe says. NATO should respond to the attacks by increasing contributions to the alliance’s PURL weapons program or by sending Ukraine more air-defense interceptor missiles, Supreme Allied Commander Europe General Alexus Grynkewich said at the Warsaw Security Forum, Ukrinform reports.

The remark runs counter to a fresh scare. After US President Donald Trump’s diesel deal with Russia, European officials said that Washington had threatened to halt weapons for Ukraine through PURL, the Financial Times reports, unless Kyiv stopped hitting Russian refineries. Grynkewich’s call to expand the program ran the other way.

One of the main goals of Russia’s hybrid operations, from airspace violations to sabotage and cyberattacks, is to break the West’s will to keep backing Ukraine, he stated. The sharpest answer is to prove that assumption wrong, he argued, turning each attack into a reason to send more.

The PURL program that lets allies fund US-made weapons for Ukraine, which drew nearly $5.5 billion in pledges before May.

Name the culprit out loud, and watch Moscow lose its cover

Once responsibility for a specific attack is established, countries should publicly name who did it, Grynkewich noted, so Russia understands it has been exposed and that its network was never as untraceable as it believed.

Moscow bets it can escape blame because the West cannot work out who is behind an attack, in his telling. The response, he urged, should be to show that the West can.

One voice, not thirty-two, is what Russia actually fears

Coordination is the other half. Allies must craft a joint response rather than send Moscow chaotic, uncoordinated signals from individual states, he stressed, and must spell out clearly where their red lines lie.

That unity is itself a deterrent. A single, agreed answer tells Russia the alliance is harder to split than its hybrid campaign assumes, and that attacks meant to divide the West only harden its resolve, he contends.

A month from idea to first kill. A new interceptor drone built by former Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov's team with Pavlo Yelizarov, the commander of Lasar's Group unit, soldiers, and engineers, has shot down two Russian jet-powered Geran-5 drones heading for Kyiv, Fedorov says, just one month after development began.

Russia's jet-powered Gerans fly far faster than the propeller Shaheds that Ukraine learned to shoot down, and they remain the hardest targets for its air defenses, which catch only about 55 percent of them. The new drone is fast enough to catch a jet drone before it reaches a city, Fedorov noted, adding that the two Geran-5 kills are the first confirmed for the interceptor.

Crews from Lasar's Group in Ukraine's National Guard ran the combat trials and downed the two drones within days. Fedorov announced the drone on 12 October, Yelizarov's birthday.

A former minister and a legendary commander behind the kill

Yelizarov joined Ukraine's Defense Forces in 2022 and, in January 2026, became deputy commander of the Air Force, responsible for small-scale air defense and systems for intercepting Russian drones, Forbes Ukraine reports. He founded Lasar's Group, which destroyed $12 billion worth of Russian equipment.

Fedorov, who ran the Digital Transformation and Defense ministries before moving to the private sector, says the interceptor is one of several projects his team continues to develop in Ukraine, combining engineering, military experience, and resources.

The next goal: a drone that hunts Shaheds on its own

The drone is not finished evolving. Testing continues as the team refines the technology and raises production, Fedorov said, with the next step a fully autonomous version that can detect and intercept Russian drones without an operator.

The developers also plan to scale the interceptor's use to protect more Ukrainian cities, he added. The push fits a wider drive: Ukraine aims to build up to 400 interceptors a month to chase the faster Gerans.

Russia is building a satellite network that could soon put all of Europe within its reach. The “Rassvet” satellite system is an extraordinary threat, first to Ukraine and then to the rest of Europe, Oleksandr Danyliuk, the head of the private European aerospace and defense technology company Destinus, said at the Warsaw Security Forum, according to Ukrinform.

Rassvet is Russia’s answer to Starlink, a low-orbit satellite network built by Bureau 1440 to give Moscow’s forces communications that no one else can switch off. European states must invest more quickly in cheap, effective, mass-produced systems to counter it.

“They will be able to navigate to any point in Europe without problems. This needs to be stopped,” said Danyluik, a former Ukrainian finance minister, said.

Cheap systems, made at scale

Danyliuk’s prescription is already being used on Ukraine’s front. Europe should invest in inexpensive, effective systems that can be mass-produced, he argues, the same approach Ukraine uses, and that Russia also turns against it.

“This gap needs to be filled as quickly as possible,” he said.

He urged allies not to overlook threats that might look secondary today, pointing to Rassvet as exactly that kind of slow-building danger.

Appearing strong is not enough to deter Russia, Danyliuk argued, because Moscow can gauge how ready European states actually are.

Ukraine races to catch up

Both sides are now scrambling to own the satellite link rather than rent it. Ukraine is building a satellite system of its own, similar to Starlink but beyond any single company’s control, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on 4 October.

He argued Kyiv should be free to turn Starlink on Russian military targets, warning that China and other states will share comparable satellite technology with Moscow within months.

By Ukrainian estimates, Russia still needs five to eight years to complete Rassvet, which so far reaches Ukraine only in brief passes. That window is the time Danyliuk says Europe must use.

Kyiv just cleared the important roadblock for Budapest, which stood between Kyiv and EU membership talks. Ukraine’s parliament has passed a bill on schooling in minority languages, meant to finally lift Hungary’s block on the country’s path toward EU membership, with 266 of the 450 lawmakers voting in favor, UNIAN reports.

Hungary has been the lone EU member blocking the opening of four of Ukraine’s negotiating clusters, stages of the membership process, over how Kyiv treats the Hungarian minority in Ukraine's Zakarpattia region. Roughly 80,000 ethnic Hungarians live in it, and Budapest had tied Ukraine’s entire EU course to their language rights.

Lawmakers have instructed the parliament’s speaker to sign the law without delay and send it to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

What the law changes in schools

The bill keeps Ukrainian as the main language of education, but guarantees classes in minority languages where they exist. Minorities may study in the official languages of EU member states alongside Ukrainian, and pupils may use their language in other forms of communication on school grounds.

A school can gain the status of a national-minority institution if more than half of its pupils study in that minority language, provided that language is an official EU language. Parents of at least two-thirds of a minority class can also ask the school to expand the list of subjects taught in Ukrainian.

The dispute dates back years

Ukraine’s 2017 education law and 2019 language law narrowed minority-language schooling and required more Ukrainian in secondary grades, which then-Hungarian leader Viktor Orban treated as an attack on the Hungarians of Zakarpattia, blocking Kyiv’s NATO and EU steps for years, EUalive reports. Kyiv’s position was that the laws applied to all minorities and excluded Russian.

Hungary’s newer government, in office since spring 2026, inherited the veto. Budapest lifted it on the first cluster, which the EU opened in June, Ukraine’s first since gaining candidate status in 2022, but made the rest conditional on this law.

With the bill passed, Hungary is set to allow the EU to open two more clusters, on the internal market and competitiveness, at a Council meeting in Luxembourg on 13 October. Kyiv aims to open all its clusters by year’s end.

Russia offers Ukraine a single day without strikes for its elections. Russian leader Vladimir Putin is ready to order a halt to strikes on Ukraine only on the day of a presidential election, if Kyiv decides to hold one, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov says, Russian state agency TASS reported.

The offer answers Ukraine’s call for a real pause: on 11 October, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy stated Ukraine could hold elections if Putin agreed to a full ceasefire of at least 60 days, ABC News reported. Against the backdrop of Russian strikes that killed more than 150 Ukrainian civilians in a single week, Moscow counters with a one-day truce confined to voting day.

“...If they really want to hold elections in Kyiv, the president of Russia, the supreme commander-in-chief, will be ready to give the order not to strike Ukraine on election day. Specifically on election day,” Peskov said.

His statements followed US President Donald Trump’s call on 10 October for Ukraine to choose a new president, saying a change of leadership could help reach peace with Russia, according to Suspilne.

Trump also criticized Ukrainian strikes on Russian oil refineries amid his new agreements to supply a low volume of diesel into the US.

Moscow rejects the 60-day pause

Peskov has outright dismissed the longer truce. Ukraine needs 60 days not to hold elections but to heal its wounds and continue the war, he argues.

He has claimed Russia had been willing to resume peace talks after Russia’s own State Duma elections, but accused Ukraine of launching massive strikes on Moscow to disrupt that vote. Peskov has gone further, claiming Ukraine shelled polling stations and killed several members of district election commissions in the Russian-occupied regions it calls its own.

What Peskov left out

The accusations are Russia’s and remain unverified. Peskov offered no evidence for the claims about polling stations or election officials, which echo long-running Kremlin talking points.

He also made no mention of Russia’s own strikes on Ukrainian civilian targets over the same period, including attacks on energy sites and residential buildings.

---

The ordinary security camera watching a street or a parking lot has quietly become a weapon of war. Ukraine’s Security Service has identified about 40,000 surveillance cameras since Russia’s 2022 invasion that Russian forces and spy agencies could have used to snoop, find targets and correct strikes, and has protected, reoriented or blocked them, The Wall Street Journal reported.

The discovered threat reaches well beyond Ukraine: Dutch intelligence warned in July that Russian state actors are systematically hacking cameras across Europe to track arms deliveries to Ukraine and the whereabouts of Ukrainian troops.

AI makes it faster

About 1.2 billion internet-connected cameras now watch the world, in doorbells, traffic lights, and baby monitors, and almost any of them can be hacked, the journalists found.

In Ukraine, the danger is lethal. In 2024, Russian hackers took over residential webcams in Kyiv, including one that a condominium association had installed, to find targets and adjust missile strikes on the capital, Ukraine's Security Service says.

Spying on Europe’s edge

Evidence of European reach keeps surfacing. Cybersecurity firm CloudSEK has recently uncovered an exposed server it suspects belongs to a Russian-speaking hacker, containing hundreds of webcam images of Ukrainian defense, government, energy, and communications sites, as well as scenes of daily life.

Many of the images came from locations near Ukraine’s border with NATO member Romania, CloudSEK says.

The Dutch warning and the server point the same way: cameras far from the front line are feeding Russia data on how the West arms Ukraine.

Ukraine turns the lens back on Russia

Ukraine also uses the same tactic inside the occupied territory. The international hacker group Team OneFist took control of a camera in Sevastopol, in occupied Crimea, and used it to watch Russian ships, submarines, and helicopters, spotting a previously unknown air base that Ukraine later struck, damaging planes and air defenses.

Team OneFist also reached cameras on the Kerch Strait Bridge, learning that Russia had installed motion sensors beneath the bridge to guard against waterborne attacks. Penetrating a well-placed camera gets analysts closer to targets at less risk than any secret agent.

Units of Ukraine’s Unmanned Systems Forces have killed or wounded more than 100,000 Russian troops since the start of 2026. That is more than 150,000 since the force was created on 11 June 2025, the force said on Telegram.

Drones have become the deadliest weapon of this war, accounting for about 96% of Russia’s battlefield casualties earlier this year. These hits are verified on video in the military’s Delta system, which is how the force counts only the losses its own pilots confirm.

“Behind these figures is the daily combat work of our soldiers, thousands of sorties, precise strikes, and the constant improvement of unmanned technologies,” Ukraine’s Unmanned Systems Forces said.

Each strike reduces Russia's combat potential and reflects the coordinated work of the force’s units, it added.

A toll that keeps climbing

Overall, drone branches of the Ukrainian Army had carried out more than 1 million verified strikes on enemy targets since January, killing or seriously wounding about 193,500 Russian troops, Ukraine’s Defense Ministry reported in July.

Those strikes roughly doubled over the first half of the year, from about 105,800 in January to more than 200,000 in June, the ministry noted.

Meanwhile, Commander of the separate Ukrainian Unmanned Systems Forces Robert “Madiar” Brovdi says the numbers are still growing. In the first five days of October, the force’s pilots killed or wounded 2,699 Russian soldiers, 39.7 percent more than in the same period of September.

He tied the rising number to Russia's assaults in Donbas, as the offensives for the fortress-belt cities that have been Ukraine's protection against full region's occupation since 2014, were ongoing.

Why the drone branch matters

The force fields are the cheap, fast weapons that now do most of the killing on the front. Interceptor and strike drones let Ukraine hit troops, logistics, and command posts while keeping its own soldiers farther from the fight.

SpaceX will not cut Ukraine off from Starlink satellite communications, Serhii “Flash” Beskrestnov, presidential adviser on defense technology, says. The reason is that the company could lose a large share of its revenue.

Ukraine’s troops and drones lean heavily on Starlink, a network Kyiv neither owns nor controls, and Elon Musk has used that control against it before. The latest shutdown fears spread after Elon Musk supported US President Donald Trump's criticism of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

“Not a year goes by without it coming up again: ‘They’ll cut off our Starlink.’ The enemy’s Telegram channels fuel these rumors. We have good and stable partner relations with SpaceX,” Flash writes.

Musk is first of all a businessman, and Ukraine brings SpaceX significant profit, so he is sure no one will switch Starlink off in Ukraine, Flash said. Unexpected moves are possible, he added, but of a different kind, such as turning Starlink on for Russia inside its own territory.

The rumors come amid real US pressure

The fears did not appear in a vacuum. After Trump allowed Russian diesel back to US markets, talk spread of "sanctions" on Ukraine if it keeps hitting the Russian refineries that fund Moscow, with the Financial Times reporting, citing European officials, that Trump’s administration has threatened to halt the mechanism for buying US weapons for Ukraine, known as PURL.

Axios has also reported, citing a Ukrainian and an American official, that Washington has threatened to stop sharing intelligence with Ukraine if it continues striking Russian refineries.

Ukraine is building a backup

The scare feeds a longer effort to reduce dependence. Ukraine is working on a satellite system of its own, something similar to Starlink but beyond Musk’s control, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on 4 October.

The timing is the reason, he said: some states will share the technology with Russia late this year or early next, and the Chinese are among them. Moscow is already fielding its own Starlink-style constellation, Rassvet, though for now it reaches Ukraine only in brief passes.

Aviation is one of the most effective ways to counter Russia’s jet-powered drones. Its effectiveness continues to grow due to pilots’ skill and better coordination, Defense Minister Yevhenii Khmara says, Glavcom reports.

Russia’s jet-powered Gerans fly several times faster than the propeller Shaheds Ukraine learned to shoot down, and they remain the main challenge for its air defense. Ukraine downs more than 90% of the slow drones but only about 55% of the jet ones.

“Due to them, our aviation now uses fewer munitions per aerial target. We plan to improve this further,” Khmara states.

Air defense works as a layered system because no single type of weapon is enough, he explains. The layers run from surface-to-air and shoulder-fired missiles to turrets, electronic warfare, interceptor-drone crews, and small-scale air defense, topped by aircraft including Mirage and F-16 jets.

Scaling what works against jet drones

Ukraine already has combat results against the jet drones, Khmara notes. In one engagement, five Bars interceptors destroyed five aerial targets, a 100% hit rate in that case, and the task now is to raise the overall destruction rate and quickly scale the solutions that prove themselves.

Heavy-caliber turrets are adding to that. Their number in service already runs into the hundreds, he adds.

“This direction is being scaled, and systems with greater range are being worked on. In parallel, surface-to-air and shoulder-fired missile systems are also proving effective,” he says.

Preparing for the next generation

Ukraine is also looking past today’s threats, the minister stresses. The ministry is working to supply interceptor drones, aviation and its munitions, missile and artillery systems, turrets and electronic warfare gear, and to plan several steps ahead with enough stock in reserve.

“We also know what solutions Russia is developing, which concern jet drones with a speed of 800 kilometers per hour. We are working on finding countermeasures to the next generation of threats,” Khmara says.

Producers have been tasked with offering proposals and prototypes, he concludes.

Russia hit the CHP-5 thermal plant in Kharkiv on the evening of 11 October. It came hours after US President Donald Trump announced an energy ceasefire between Ukraine and Russia, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in his nightly address.

Trump had announced the energy truce earlier that day, though Kyiv reported no part in any such deal, as well as Moscow. Yet in this one week, Russia carried out more than 200 strikes on Ukraine’s power generation and transmission and 17 on its gas and oil sites, killing more than 150 people and wounding more than 700, according to Zelenskyy.

“All day today, there were Russian Shaheds in the sky. There are Shaheds in the sky now, too. There were strikes by aerial bombs. There were strikes on our energy. Just now there was a strike on CHP-5 in Kharkiv,” Zelenskyy states.

Ukraine welcomes the agreement Trump announced and is ready to stop striking Russian energy if Russia does the same. For that to mean anything, he stresses, it has to become part of reality.

A one-word answer from Moscow

Ukraine has offered many de-escalation steps, Zelenskyy notes, but Russian ruler Vladimir Putin met them all with the same refusal. He voices hope that the Russian leader would finally tell the US, Ukraine, and the world something other than killing and deception, something that leads to a real and dignified peace.

Ukraine wants peace, and the question is whether Russia does. The Armed Forces have received all the relevant orders to defend the country, he confirms.

Allies line up fresh support

Zelenskyy says he also spoke with members of the US Congress and, the day before with the UK prime minister, French President Emmanuel Macron, and Norway’s prime minister, all of whom offered help.

Ukraine is also working with the EU on financing for its defense and budget stability, and preparing new steps on European integration.

Ukraine’s Defense Procurement Agency has contracted about 5.5 times as many drones of various types in recent months as in the same period of 2025. It is roughly 300% more over the year as a whole, the Defense Ministry said.

Drones are the weapons this war runs on, from short-range strikes to hits deep inside Russia, and Ukraine has raced to build and buy more of them while sparing its troops. The agency contracted for about $8 billion worth of drones in the first half of 2026 alone, double the amount for the same period last year.

The ministry wants to arm the force at every level, Defense Minister Yevhenii Khmara stresses. Deep-strike drones hit targets far inside Russia, while middle-strike drones kill enemy drone crews and burn logistics and command posts, lowering the risk to Ukrainian soldiers.

“Technology and having enough of these systems raise combat effectiveness and at the same time reduce the risks for our soldiers,” Khmara said.

FPV drones lead the surge

The sharpest growth is in FPV drones, the cheap first-person-view quadcopters that do much of the killing on the front. Contracting for them in 2026 already exceeds the total for all of 2025 by 54%, and deliveries have risen almost 3.7 times, the ministry notes.

International support and the scaling of Ukraine’s own defense industry made the jump possible, Khmara adds. Much of the buying now runs through the DOT-Chain Defense marketplace, where units select what they need, and the agency handles contracts and logistics, cutting the average delivery time for in-stock items to 9 days.

Making supply predictable

The ministry is trying to make deliveries steadier, Khmara explains. It is aligning the front’s needs, purchase planning, and the production capacity of the Ukrainian industry, making supply more predictable.

Predictable contracting lets manufacturers build their production lines step by step, plan logistics and order components in advance, he says. The ministry frames the push as a larger order book for the domestic industry and a way to scale the solutions that work in combat.

Ukraine wants to build more weapons at home while making it easier to draft the people who build them. Kyiv has proposed cutting the draft-exemption quota for defense-industry enterprises from 100% of their workers to 85%, while the Ukrainian Council of Arms Manufacturers says the limit should stay at the previous level for qualifying critical plants.

The change would strip the draft shield from 15% of the workers at plants the Defense Ministry has deemed critical to the economy. Those are the people who set production volumes, delivery dates, and new designs, the council argues, so losing them would hit output just as Ukraine pushes to make more of its own weapons.

The draft resolution has already been sent to the Cabinet of Ministers for approval.

“We consider that the proposed reduction of the limit does not account for the staffing needs of defense production,” the council says.

A workforce that takes years to build

Ukraine’s defense industry is still growing, with new plants, expanding capacity, and new technologies, the council adds. Raising the share of Ukrainian-made weapons in the forces, localizing components, and cutting reliance on imports all require more specialists, not fewer.

These teams are built over the years, the manufacturers add. Companies invest in finding and training people who master specific technologies and production processes, and keeping them is what lets firms plan expansion and take on new commitments to the military.

Uncertainty at the worst moment

Cutting the exemption limit would add uncertainty, just as the state expects producers to raise output. The fallout could affect both manufacturers and military units awaiting their weapons.

The council urges the Economy Ministry to drop the cut to 85%and asks the Defense Ministry and the Cabinet to maintain exemptions of up to 100% for qualifying defense workers. It offers to share data on the industry’s staffing needs and help assess how the change would affect defense orders.

The reservation rules must reflect the growth of the defense industry and Ukraine’s need for more of its own weapons, it concludes.

US President Donald Trump has announced an immediate energy ceasefire in the war between Russia and Ukraine, saying both sides agreed to stop striking each other’s energy facilities, in a post on Truth Social. Ukraine, however, knew nothing about the deal.

Russia has spent the war hitting Ukraine's power plants, refineries, and grids, while Ukraine answered with strikes on its refineries and plants that produce missiles. If confirmed, a halt before winter would be a major break. Yet about seven minutes before Trump’s announcement, Russia struck at Kyiv’s thermal plant, cutting power to several districts of the capital at once.

“Effective immediately, there is an ENERGY CEASEFIRE in the War between Russia and Ukraine. Both parties have agreed. Do not break it!” Trump wrote.

News for Zelenskyy

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told Axios the announcement “was news" for him. But if Russians agree to an energy ceasefire, Ukraine will agree, he added. Moscow gave no immediate confirmation.

The announcement follows days of friction over energy. Washington has just eased sanctions on Russian diesel and pressed Kyiv to stop hitting Russian refineries, while Russian strikes killed more than 80 Ukrainian civilians in two days.

A truce no one in Kyiv confirmed

Zelenskyy had already signaled Ukraine’s terms. He said on Sunday that Kyiv was ready to stop striking Russian refineries if Moscow halted its attacks on Ukrainian energy, so the condition was on the table before Trump spoke, not settled by him.

If Trump negotiated it with Putin, then he should say when the ceasefire begins, Zelenskyy added, underlining that Ukraine had not been party to any such agreement.

Ukrainians greet it with doubt

The reaction in Kyiv was wary. Trump already declared an energy ceasefire once, and Putin broke it within five minutes, said Andrii Kovalenko, former head of Ukraine’s Center for Countering Disinformation, asking whether Trump was now “announcing it to himself.”

Meanwhile, lawmaker Yaroslav Zhelezniak called for an explanation, warning that Trump’s “energy ceasefire” might mean Ukraine stops hitting Russian refineries and tankers while Russia merely promises not to strike Ukrainian oil tankers it would struggle to find in the first place.