According to Defence Minister Yevhenii Khmara, the Starlink and Starshield satellite connection is once again available to the Ukrainian armed forces at a speed of more than 400 kilometres per hour. Khmara said this to journalists on Saturday, as reported by the news outlet NV, citing the news agency Interfax-Ukraine. The connection is currently stable.
“The monitoring systems of the Ministry of Defence are recording the restoration of the speed of Starlink/Starshield. We are measuring more than 400 km/h, the connection is stable,” NV quoted the minister as saying. Previously, sources in the Ministry of Defence had told Deutsche Welle on Saturday morning that the speed had returned to more than 161 km/h. The ministry would continue to monitor the systems, Khmara said.
President Volodymyr Zelensky had announced the restoration on Saturday in a video address published on the Presidential Office’s Telegram channel, as reported by the Kyiv Post. “The most important development for today: the operation of Starlink and Starshield has been restored to the speeds that existed before all these restrictions,” Zelensky said, according to the report. The restoration had begun during the night, and by the morning the speeds had been sufficient for operational use. Khmara had informed him on Saturday morning in an official briefing about the results of the technical tests.
What the restriction meant for the drones
The limitation became known on 14 October. The Starshield package used by the Ukrainian armed forces was affected; the connection dropped when moving at more than about 160 km/h. According to sources in Kyiv, this hampered attack missions against Russian troops and logistics in occupied territory and slowed down the interceptor drones deployed against Russian jet-powered “Shahed” drones. What caused the throttling remains officially unclear.
US President Donald Trump had stated on 23 October that he had not ordered the restriction; on the same day, according to NV, he claimed that SpaceX chief Elon Musk had lifted the speed limit for the military version of Starlink. However, Ukrainian military personnel and Zelensky continued to report existing limits – on 23 October, Zelensky said in an interview with ABC News that Starlink’s capabilities remained restricted and that Musk was aware of the situation. Musk himself had written on X on 14 October that the Starshield systems belonged to and were controlled by the US government; restrictions on speed or use were decided by the US military and ultimately by the US president. The Frankfurter Rundschau reproduced his remarks on 15 October.
The dispute extends all the way to the US Congress: according to NV, Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal has initiated an investigation into the Starshield failure, and senators from both parties are threatening to block Trump’s personnel decisions. The Kyiv Post writes that Zelensky thanked the American partners, members of Congress, the media, the US State Department and Trump for resolving the problem.
Only 24 Patriot interceptor missiles in three months
The situation in air defence remains considerably more difficult. According to the Kyiv Post, Zelensky said that Kyiv was in talks with Washington and European partners so that regular deliveries of surface-to-air interceptor missiles against Russian ballistic missiles could resume. “It is very important that deliveries of interceptor missiles for air defence – interceptor missiles against Russian ballistics – are renewed. There are packages that we are still waiting for. Among them are packages from America and from European partners – packages for which political decisions have already been made,” he is quoted as saying.
According to earlier statements by Zelensky cited by the Kyiv Post, Ukraine has received only 24 Patriot interceptor missiles from the US in the past three months, against an estimated need of around 350 interceptor missiles per month. The figure comes from Zelensky’s own account, not from the supplier countries.
For the coming week, the president announced diplomatic consultations in Europe, to be attended by representatives of the US president and European allies. “Europe must be involved in the diplomatic process,” he said, according to the Kyiv Post, adding that Ukraine always involves European partners and expects this to continue in the coming week.
A corridor for Oleshky
According to Zelensky, an agreement also exists for the occupied town of Oleshky in the southern Kherson region, where people are cut off from food and medical care. Russian troops had heavily mined the access roads. “There is also an agreement on Oleshky. It is to be implemented soon so that access to Oleshky is opened up,” Zelensky said. He expressed hope that the humanitarian operation would succeed: bringing food and medicine in and letting people out of the combat zone. The agreement had been discussed at several institutional levels; Kyiv is counting on the effect of American mediation.
Editorial assessment: The rapid return to over 400 km/h shows how heavily Ukrainian warfare depends on a single commercial satellite system – and how vulnerable it is as long as the decision about it is made outside Kyiv. Whether the throttling is off the table for good cannot be demonstrated with the information available; according to Khmara, the Ministry of Defence intends to keep measuring. For air defence, the gap between the need for around 350 interceptor missiles a month and the 24 Patriot missiles of the past three months remains the more pressing problem.
