Ukraine Confirms Restoration of Starlink Links for Military Drones

Ukraine's Defence Minister said Saturday that Starlink and Starshield satellite connections have been stabilized, ending a week of outages that had disrupted military drone operations. Yevhenii Khmara said the connections were working on equipment moving at speeds above 400 kilometers per hour (250 miles per hour). He attributed the result to talks with Washington and the diplomacy of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

Ukraine relies heavily on satellite services from SpaceX, owned by Elon Musk, for communications and drone missions against Russian forces. Who ordered the restrictions has not been determined. U.S. President Donald Trump has denied any responsibility while defending Musk.

The episode strained relations between Kyiv and Washington, already tense over Trump's agreement to temporarily lift sanctions on Russian diesel and permit U.S. imports. Trump called earlier this month for Ukraine to have a new president, and on Monday he said someone other than Zelenskyy should negotiate for Kyiv. The exchanges follow a public confrontation between the two leaders at the White House in February 2025.

The service restoration comes as the United States attempts to revive peace negotiations between Moscow and Kyiv. Negotiators from Ukraine, Russia and the U.S. are expected to meet in Abu Dhabi in the first half of November, more than four years after Russia began its full-scale invasion in February 2022. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov confirmed the planned talks on Friday, and Zelenskyy announced agreement on technical-level meetings.

Trump also credited his wife, Melania Trump, with securing a local ceasefire in Oleshky, in the Kherson region of southern Ukraine, which Russian forces have occupied since 2022. Later statements from Ukrainian and Russian officials set the start of the ceasefire at October 27, with a humanitarian operation planned for October 29.

Fighting continued in the meantime. A Russian missile strike on Lozova, in the northeastern Kharkiv region, killed a man and wounded two others Saturday, according to Governor Oleh Syniehubov. In Chernihiv, a Russian attack on Friday killed a man and wounded at least 25 people, local authorities said. Donetsk officials reported shelling in Kramatorsk killed one person and wounded six, including three children, while Sloviansk Mayor Vadym Lyakh said Friday's attacks there killed a 62-year-old woman and wounded four people.

Ukraine reported strikes inside Russia on Friday and overnight into Saturday. They included the Togliattikauchuk petrochemical plant in Togliatti, a major producer of synthetic rubber, where Mayor Ilya Sukhikh confirmed industrial damage but no casualties. Ukraine also said it hit the Proton electronics plant in Oryol, which it says makes missile components. Regional Governor Andrei Klychkov reported three deaths in an attack on an unidentified facility. Authorities in Russian-occupied Crimea reported power cuts after overnight Ukrainian attacks. Russia's Defence Ministry said its air defences intercepted a SCALP cruise missile, four Neptune missiles and 1,297 Ukrainian fixed-wing drones over 24 hours, TASS reported. These figures could not be independently verified.