According to its Defence Minister Yevhenii Chmara, Ukraine again has a stable connection to the satellite communication systems Starlink and Starshield of the US company SpaceX. “The connection is stable,” Chmara told journalists on Saturday; the defence ministry’s monitoring systems were again registering normal speeds of over 400 kilometres per hour, reports the French news channel France 24. Previously, the leadership in Kyiv had complained for days about throttling.
According to France 24, the restrictions were first reported on 14 October; according to information from Kyiv, connection speeds had fallen to about 160 kilometres per hour or less. This had impaired Ukraine’s ability to intercept Russian attack drones and disrupted communication at the front. The restoration was “above all important for our front, for our soldiers, for the use of drones, for logistics and for communication,” Chmara explained according to tagesschau.de.
According to France 24, the defence ministry did not say whether the service had been fully restored. According to the broadcaster, neither SpaceX chief Elon Musk nor the US government has taken responsibility for the throttling; both had publicly stated that only the other could have made such a decision. Reuters had reported that the order to throttle Starshield had come from the White House. US President Donald Trump said on Friday that if the problems with Starlink access in Ukraine persisted, he would “fix that”.
Meanwhile, the Ukrainian armed forces attacked a petrochemical facility in the Russian city of Tolyatti overnight, as the Ukrainian General Staff announced on Telegram. The attack triggered an explosion and a fire. Tolyatti is home to the carmaker AvtoVAZ with its Lada brand and the ammonia producer Togliattiazot. The General Staff also confirmed an attack on the plant of Proton-Electrotex in the city of Oryol, a manufacturer of optoelectronic equipment.
According to the governor of the Oryol region, Andrei Klychkov, three people were killed in the Ukrainian missile attack on a facility in Oryol. On the Russian-occupied Crimea, according to the Russian authorities, a Ukrainian attack led to power and water outages. The head of the peninsula installed by Moscow, Sergei Aksyonov, stated on Telegram that restrictions had been imposed on the supply of both.
