Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the Starshield satellite communications system has returned to its previous operating speed following restrictions that had disrupted Ukrainian military operations.
"This is very important and significant for our frontline logistics and for protecting Ukraine against jet-powered Shahed drones," Zelenskyy wrote on Telegram on October 24.
Developed by Elon Musk's SpaceX, Starshield is a military-focused service that complements the company's commercial Starlink network. Ukraine relies heavily on both systems.
Recent disruptions have left Ukraine more vulnerable to Russian air attacks, which Moscow has launched with increasing frequency in recent months, causing significant damage to Ukraine’s logistics, energy, and civilian infrastructure.
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Star Wars: A Russian Military Satellite Gets Very, Very Close To One Used By Ukraine"The speed is now where we need it to be," Zelenskyy said, as Ukrainian Defense Minister Yevheniy Khmara had earlier told RFE/RL’s Ukrainian Service that Kyiv's monitoring systems had recorded restored connectivity on equipment traveling at speeds exceeding 400 kilometers per hour (250 mph).
A Ukrainian official familiar with the matter had previously told RFE/RL that satellite connections were still being lost at speeds of around 161 kilometers per hour (100 mph) as recently as the previous day, significantly limiting Kyiv's defensive capabilities.
Khmara described the restoration as another example of how "direct dialogue and the Ukrainian president's persistent stance" can deliver results important for Ukrainian troops, drone operations, logistics, and communications.
The development followed nearly two weeks of reported restrictions that prevented Ukrainian drone interceptors and other equipment from maintaining satellite connections at higher speeds.
Questions remain over who imposed the restrictions.
Serhiy Beskrestnov, an adviser to Zelenskyy on defense technology, suggested that the restrictions on Ukraine's Starshield access were connected to recent tensions between Kyiv and Washington, although that link has not been established.
US President Donald Trump's administration has denied that he or anyone else in the US government had requested changes to the systems. Musk, for his part, has said that Starshield systems are controlled by the government, with decisions on restrictions to their speed or use made by the military and ultimately Trump.
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White House Says Melania Trump Brokers Localized Cease-Fire For Occupied Ukrainian CityEarlier in the week, The Wall Street Journal, citing US officials, reported that Trump had called Musk and urged him to lift the Starshield speed restrictions. According to the report, satellite communications began functioning more reliably after their conversation.
Asked whether he had spoken to Musk about the matter, Trump declined to comment but later added that "if there is a problem, I will get it straightened out."
The restrictions also prompted scrutiny in the US Congress, where Democratic and some Republican lawmakers demanded answers about who authorized the changes and called for guarantees that Ukraine would retain reliable access to the systems.
The first reports about limitations in Kyiv's access emerged amid concerns in Ukraine over a series of moves that Zelenskyy and some of Kyiv's Western allies said would play into Russian President Vladimir Putin's hands and further fuel Moscow's war effort.
In the past two weeks, Trump has announced a deal encouraging Russian diesel exports, and waived sanctions that were about to be imposed under a law he signed last month.
Separately, Trump has repeatedly urged Kyiv to stop targeting Russian oil refineries, attributing high diesel prices to those attacks rather than to reduced energy flows from the Middle East amid the US-Israeli war with Iran.
At first, Zelenskyy appeared to support halting the strikes but said he expected Moscow to do the same. However, after Putin ordered Russia's strikes against Ukraine to continue last week, the Ukrainian president said Kyiv was "done" with unilaterally pausing its own.
Russia-Occupied Crimea In Blackout As Kyiv And Moscow Trade Attacks
Trump made ending Russia's war against Ukraine a priority when he began his current term in January 2025, but Kyiv and Moscow remain far apart in their negotiating positions and talks have stalled.
The Kremlin has offered no concessions, repeatedly rejecting calls for a cease-fire, continuing its relentless and deadly strikes across Ukraine, aimed at pressuring Kyiv into accepting its hard-line demands for peace.
On October 24, Ukraine's air defense forces said they had shot down 100 of the 130 drones Russia launched overnight. At least two people were killed in the attacks, which struck 15 locations across the country.
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Dodging Russian Drones On Ukrainian Road To Frontline Druzhkivka
With a fifth wartime winter approaching, Russian attacks have become almost a daily occurrence. As of this year, Kyiv has increasingly responded with a campaign of its own.
Ukrainian long-range strikes on military and energy facilities inside Russia have left the country facing its worst fuel crisis in years, stoking discontent among Russians who had previously been largely unaffected by their country's invasion of Ukraine.
On October 24, Ukraine's General Staff said Ukrainian forces had struck two Russian industrial facilities and a military airport.
It added that one of the facilities, located in the city of Oryol some 350 kilometers southwest of Moscow, produces components for the cruise and ballistic missiles Russia uses to attack Ukraine, while the other, in Togliatti in the Samara region, manufactures rubber products, a key component of solid rocket fuel.
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Ukraine Cuts Chinese Drone Dependence, But Critical Gaps RemainSeparately, during the early hours of the day, an electricity blackout occurred in most of Crimea, the Ukrainian peninsula that has been occupied by Russia since 2014. Power was lost in the major cities of Simferopol, Sevastopol, Yalta, Kerch, Feodosia, and other settlements across the peninsula.
Following the incident, global Internet traffic monitor NetBlocks registered an almost complete absence of connectivity in Crimea.
Russia-installed local authorities said that mobile communication was available in only 40 percent of the area, public electric transport had been suspended in Sevastopol, and water supply was sporadic and being delivered at low pressure.
According to Sergei Aksyonov, the Russian-appointed head of the occupation administration, the incident was caused by a disruption affecting main-power transmission lines outside Crimea, which he claimed resulted from a drone attack.
While Ukraine has not commented on the incident and there was no immediate independent confirmation regarding its cause, Ukrainian monitoring channels reported a fire at the Taman electrical substation in Russia's Krasnodar region, a facility that supplies electricity to Crimea via the Kerch Strait.