Ukraine regained 201 square kilometers of territory last week - the largest gain on the front since mid-2023 - possibly exploiting weaknesses in Russian communications after Moscow's forces lost access to Elon Musk's Starlink satellite service.
This rapid advance occurred about 80 km east of Zaporizhzhia, an area where Russia had achieved sustained victories since the summer of 2025, writes newsweek.
Earlier this month, Starlink, in coordination with Ukrainian authorities, decided to restrict access to its satellite network by introducing a “whitelist” system – a list of verified terminals that are allowed to operate within Ukrainian borders. Terminals that were not registered on this list were automatically blocked, leaving many Russian units without an efficient satellite connection.
Previously, Russian forces had been unauthorizedly using Starlink terminals imported abroad for critical frontline communications, including drone coordination and real-time transmission of tactical data — functions that often evaded electronic interference and were beyond the capabilities of their usual communications system.
The blocking of satellite access for Russian forces has caused serious problems in communication and operational coordination, forcing them to turn to older communication systems or weak alternatives that fail to provide stable data or fast connections. This has weakened the ability of command and control on the ground and, according to Ukrainian intelligence, has contributed to the slowdown of the Russian offensive in some sectors of the front.
Official Moscow has maintained that there was no admission of Starlink's use in these ways and has minimized the impact of the outages, but the saga of blocking satellite access remains a key factor in the dynamics of the war in Ukraine.
In this context, the loss of access to satellite service has been described by some experts as a technological blow to Russian forces at a critical moment in the conflict, and an opportunity that Ukraine has seized to advance its positions on the ground. /Telegraph/
