THE NEW YORK TIMES: Ukraine’s vulnerability grows as Starlink is restricted and Russia escalates

Nearly five years into its fight for national survival, Ukraine has entered a moment of intense vulnerability, under growing pressure not only from Russia but also now from the United States.

A double blow came overnight Wednesday.

Ukraine said that its military, with no warning, had lost access to a military version of Starlink, a pillar of its battlefield communications. Ukraine relies on the satellite internet network, known as Starshield, which is paid for by the Pentagon. That led Ukrainian officials and analysts to surmise that the restrictions had come from Washington, as President Donald Trump is locked in his latest feud with Ukraine’s leadership.

At the same time, Russia unleashed dozens of ballistic missiles in a broad attack on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure early Wednesday, cutting power to 600,000 people in the capital, Kyiv. It was a dark omen for a rapidly approaching winter in which Russia is gearing up to try to push Ukraine to the breaking point as Ukraine runs low on lifesaving air defenses.

It was unclear how long the Starshield restrictions would remain in place. Still, the Trump administration’s treatment of Ukraine has caused outrage in a country already reeling from a string of challenges.

Its energy system is at risk of collapse in the coming months as Russia pounds power plants and substations, trying to deprive Ukrainians of heat and water. Its economy is being pushed to the brink by Russian strikes on ports, warehouses and steel factories. And its budget faces a multibillion-dollar gap this year and next that could leave its military severely underfunded.

The Starshield development was interpreted in Ukraine as part of a Trump administration pressure campaign to limit Ukraine’s ability to fight. Trump is pushing Ukraine to stop attacking oil refineries so Russia can pump more diesel onto global markets as high prices threaten the prospects of Trump’s Republican Party in the midterm elections.

“Clearly, this action cannot be a coincidence and is linked to the current political situation,” Serhiy Beskrestnov, a Ukrainian military expert who advises President Volodymyr Zelensky on weapons technologies, wrote on social media about the Starlink restrictions.

SpaceX, which operates Starlink and Starshield, and its CEO, Elon Musk, did not respond to requests for comment.

Ukraine was stunned to discover the Starshield restrictions, which it said caused disruptions to several combat operations. The Ukrainian military uses Starshield in part to guide its ever-growing fleets of drones, including interceptors used to down Russian drones. The restrictions, Ukrainian officials said, tied Ukraine’s hands while leaving Russia free to wage war.

Perhaps nowhere was that imbalance clearer than in the Russian air assault overnight. The barrage included 39 ballistic missiles, Zelensky said. That would be the largest such salvo during the entire war, according to a New York Times data set based on Ukrainian air force figures.

Even as Russia pounds Ukraine day after day, leading to some of the highest civilian death tolls seen in years of war, Ukraine says it is abiding by Trump’s demand not to strike Russian oil refineries. Its campaign against refineries, which had led to fuel shortages across Russia, made Russians feel the war as never before.

Ukraine has said it is unfair that Russia is still attacking Ukraine’s power plants and substations. Zelensky has asserted that the strikes violate Trump’s self-declared energy ceasefire in Ukraine. The Trump administration views the ceasefire as covering only strikes on oil refineries, even though Ukraine has none that are operational.

Ukraine has set aside its most potent tool against Russia in part because it is worried that Trump could follow through on an apparent threat to stop providing intelligence that Ukraine needs to warn its people of incoming Russian strikes.

While Ukraine’s European partners have so far stepped in to patch Ukraine’s ballooning budget gaps as Russia batters the Ukrainian economy, Europe is not believed to be able to fully fill intelligence deficits if the United States were to pull back.

Ukrainian fears have been elevated over the past two days as Zelensky has reported that Ukraine did not receive early warnings about Russian missile strikes, though Trump said Tuesday that intelligence was still being shared.

The Ukrainian air force clarified Wednesday that while it had received no advance warning before a Russian missile struck at about 10.40pm Tuesday, it did receive warnings related to three subsequent waves of attacks that night. Such intelligence sharing is separate from Ukraine’s use of the Starshield system.

Serhii Sternenko, a former Ukrainian defence ministry adviser, said it was galling that Ukraine had complied with Trump’s demand that it stop attacking Russian oil refineries and had gotten only more restrictions in return.

“Trump was looking for any opportunity to undermine our defense capabilities,” Sternenko wrote in on social media.

The Starshield limitations, if they continue, could cripple Ukraine’s military operations. Starshield terminals are used for nearly everything the Ukrainian army deploys on the battlefield: the cars that carry troops and matériel, the drones that ferry food and water to soldiers at the front, and the attack drones that fly long distances to hit Russian positions.

The Ukrainian military uses thousands of terminals connected to Starshield, a version of the Starlink network that is harder to hack or jam. Musk said earlier this year that Starshield was “operated by the US government.”

Officials from Ukraine’s Defence Ministry said Wednesday that, without warning, SpaceX had restricted the use of Starshield for devices traveling faster than 100mph. When the device exceeded this speed, the terminals lost connection. The officials said the Defence Ministry was in touch with the US government, SpaceX and NATO partners to address the issue.

Starshield provides connections to the interceptor drones that Ukraine uses to shoot down the Russian attack drones known as Shaheds, especially the fast-flying jet-powered models that Russia is now launching toward Ukraine en masse, Beskrestnov said.

“In effect, our partners’ actions are depriving us of one of the few ways we have to defend the country against jet-powered Shaheds,” Beskrestnov said.

On Wednesday, official digital chats among military units at the front warned soldiers driving vehicles and pilots flying drones that the speed at which Starlink worked had been lowered, according to exchanges seen by a reporter for the Times.

Starlink does not operate in Russia, meaning the restrictions are not related to Trump’s demands that Ukraine stop its strikes on oil refineries. Instead, the restrictions appear designed to hobble Ukraine’s ability to fight within its own territory, just as its forces are regaining territory through counterassaults.

As Ukraine faces the new Starshield challenge, Russia is escalating its campaign against Ukraine’s energy system, aiming to make life unbearable for civilians, Ukrainian officials say.

The overnight attack Wednesday hit all three of Ukraine’s combined heat-and-power plants, Prime Minister Serhii Koretskyi wrote on social media.

The assault followed a handful of strikes on the energy infrastructure earlier this month that caused power and water outages in Kyiv — a sign that it now takes only a few strikes to disable a power grid battered by years of attacks.