Kyiv Regains High-Speed Drone Links After Week-Long Blackout

Ukrainian forces regained full access to satellite communications for their drone operations on Saturday.

Defence Minister Yevhenii Khmara announced that connections via Starlink and Starshield are stable on equipment moving faster than 400 kilometres per hour. The service had been restricted for more than seven days, a gap that impeded military strikes against Russian positions.

Khmara attributed the restoration to diplomatic efforts by President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and negotiations with Washington. The exact origin of the initial restrictions remains unclear. US President Donald Trump denied ordering the cutoff while defending Elon Musk, whose company SpaceX provides the satellite infrastructure.

The technical fix arrives amid rising tensions between the two nations. Relations were already strained by Trump's agreement to temporarily lift sanctions on Russian diesel and permit US imports. Trump publicly called for a change in Ukrainian leadership earlier this month. He suggested on Monday that a figure other than Zelenskyy should handle negotiations for Kyiv. These remarks followed a public dispute between the two leaders at the White House in February 2025.

The return of service coincides with efforts to restart peace talks. Negotiators from Ukraine, Russia, and the United States are scheduled to meet in Abu Dhabi in early November. This will be the first major trilateral meeting since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov confirmed the plan on Friday, while Zelenskyy noted that technical-level meetings have been agreed upon.

Trump also claimed credit for a local ceasefire in Oleshky, a village in the Kherson region occupied by Russian forces since 2022. He credited his wife, Melania Trump, with securing the truce. Ukrainian and Russian officials later specified that the ceasefire begins on October 27, with a humanitarian operation planned for October 29.

Combat continued on the front lines during the outage. A Russian missile strike on Lozova in the Kharkiv region killed one man and injured two others on Saturday, according to Governor Oleh Syniehubov. In Chernihiv, an attack on Friday left one man dead and at least 25 people wounded. In Donetsk, shelling in Kramatorsk killed one person and injured six, including three children. Mayor Vadym Lyakh of Sloviansk reported that Friday's attacks there killed a 62-year-old woman and injured four others.