Musk cutting Starlink to Russia’s drones has delivered ‘enormous’ boost to Ukraine, says army chief

Russia’s drone campaign in Ukraine has been cut by up to 40 per cent, allowing Ukraine to regain territory after Elon Musk blocked Russia’s access to his Starlink satellite network, according to one of Ukraine’s most senior army chiefs.

Andrii Biletski, commander of Ukraine Third Corps, says SpaceX’s move to switch off Starlink in areas of Ukraine now held by Russia’s invading forces had been “enormous”.

“After the blocking of Starlink for the Russians, the level of their efficiency compared to ours has sharply decreased because Starlink is practically irreplaceable as a combat communication system,” the brigadier general tells The Independent.

“Starlink can only be replaced with another Starlink. Therefore, the impact of Starlink on the current course of the war is enormous.

“In the last two weeks, there has been a significant deterioration in the effectiveness of Russian strikes, by about 20 to 40 per cent.”

Biletski, the founder of the Azov brigade and later of the Third Brigade, is a former historian, right wing agitator and veteran of fighting in Ukraine since Russia’s 2014 invasion, is now in command of about 12 per cent of the 1,300km front line.

His forces are concentrated in several brigades in some of the most violent parts of the front where drone warfare has change the nature of conflict into a 15 km wide “kill zone” dominated by drones, where soldiers hide and flit about a blasted landscape.

In recent weeks, Ukraine has recaptured territory around Pokrovsk, north of Lyman in his area of operations, and south near Huleiapolie since the Starlink access was recently blocked to Russia.

The small laptop sized Starlink units are the backbone of communications on both sides. They are also fitted on larger drones, Russian Shahed missiles, and used for all battle communications on the ground.

In Ukraine, SpaceX provided free terminals for the early stages of the defence against invading Russians.

But Russia was a quick private adopter of the technology and Ukraine’s ministry of defence now believes Moscow has lost almost every terminal it was using on its operations here.

Biletski believes the damage to Russia’s capability may be long term: “It’s a great opportunity for Ukraine, and I think – this is a subjective opinion – that within a month or two, they will partially regain their efficiency with the help of other means, Russian satellite communications, and so on.

“But they will never be able to fully restore the level of efficiency they had with Starlink in the foreseeable future. I don’t think we’re even talking about three or five years.”

So that’s been a significant strategic blow to the Russians, just that one flicking of a switch.

“Indeed,” he continues. “Americans have an absolute advantage over any army in the world right now—and that’s Starlink.”

He says that if Ukraine also lost its Starlink connection then “we will be on the same level as the Russians again, as it was three weeks ago”.

But the saga of the satellite terminals shows how vulnerable modern armies are to individual systems and in a fast evolving war over technology, daily mutations of cheap relatively low-tech drones can overwhelm the most expensive and conventional armed forces.

Ukrainian drone pilots, who destroyed Nato forces in a battle exercise last year involving thousands of troops, warn that Russia’s unmanned weapons pose a formidable danger to the West.

A small unit of 10 Ukrainian drone operators were able to destroy 17 armoured vehicles, damage another 30, cripple the capacity of an attacking division, and even deliver humanitarian assistance.

They were fresh from the real front line. For them routing Nato forces was a breeze.

One of the pilots, Mykola Holovatiuk, says he was “surprised” Nato forces did not appear to have studied the war in Ukraine which has evolved into a drone conflict in which large assaults by armoured groups have ended.

“Massive armoured vehicle assaults do not work any more.” he says. “Because now there is a kill zone that is growing. And the quantity of the different kinds of UAVs in the sky – half of them just working to find the target – half of them going after the target – means there is a very fast reaction time between being seen, and being destroyed.”

The 2025 exercise, Operation Hedgehog, was intended to reveal the extent to which Nato had to change its tactics, senior officers said.

“This was a Nato-led and organised exercise set up to allow us to experience lessons from a drone- experienced army to enable us to learn fast and adapt,” one general, a former Nato commander, explains. “So a success – not some disaster for Nato that shocked us. Nato knows it needs to develop fast on drones.”

Russia is also learning in real time on the battlefield. This puts pressure on Nato defence doctrine as rapid expansions of arms buying has been partly stalled by the break-neck evolution of modern weapons themselves.

Some of the roles of helicopters and fighter bomber aeroplanes are being replaced by much cheaper drones.

“It changes every month. Every month we find something new and start using it effectively. After a month they find something to defend against this technology. And all the time the kill zone is growing and the quantity of different UAVs is going up,” warns Holovatiuk.

He is currently fighting near Pokvrosk, the scene of Russia’s hardest push. Here the “kill zone” is up to 20km deep – where human beings cower for survival under a drone-filled sky.

Medical evacuations have been almost impossible and force the use of remote controlled ground drones. Infantry, hiding in bunkers, are resupplied from the air by “heavy” bomber drones dropping around 10kg of water, food, batteries and ammunition. The barest essentials to life in the kill zone.

Sudden shifts in technology can have an immediate effect. The key is how fast one system can be replaced with another.

Ukraine is already backing up its own communications in case Starlink is cut.

Alongside European allies, Ukraine is also setting up alternative satellite intelligence feeds amid fears that the US may cut them off if so-called peace talks with Russia break down.

And close to the battlefield in the eastern front, drone operators hunker down in workshops where they modify, repair and update their equipment daily.

Many are sent by European arms manufacturers for testing. None, they say, are as useful as Ukraine’s products which are cheaper and more plentiful – mostly, they say, because the motive for arms manufacture in Europe is money not national defence.

“Here we could be struck with Russian missiles any minute. Or with deep strike drones or even middle range drones or with aviation bombs. We’re pretty pretty close to the front line,” says Eugene.

He was “bought’ from another Ukrainian unit for a pickup truck – traded like a football player – because he’s a premier division UAV engineer.

Is being close to the front important?

“Yeah, because we don’t have a lot of drones, we have to quickly repair them, adopt, modify, and we have to stay in constant communication with units that do all the fighting,” he says.

“We go to them ourselves – We are constantly trying to understand how we’re using our drones, what do we need. Now it’s going to be a change in season which will bring a whole lot of new difficulties.”