The moment that plunged Putin’s war into crisis ...Middle East

Ukraine is edging ahead in its battle with Russia as the war moves into its fifth summer.

In money, men, drones and diplomacy, Ukraine is capitalising on the momentum as cracks appear in the Russian war effort, on and off the battlefield.

With money and equipment pouring in including a loan of €90 billion (£78bn) from the EU ratified last week and an agreement for Britain to supply 120,000 drones, successful strikes on Russian energy sites deep inside the country, and Ukraine ploughing ahead in its world-leading drone warfare capabilities, Kyiv is driving Vladimir Putin’s forces to fight on its terms.

However, the shifting tides are not down solely to Ukrainian military and diplomatic ingenuity.

One pivotal moment came earlier this year from a surprising source close to the heart of Donald Trump’s Maga movement: Elon Musk.

The SpaceX chief’s decision in February to block Russian access to Starlink satellites has had dramatic results on the front lines.

Starlink provides high-speed internet used for communications between troops and for directing drones.

Access to Starlink has never been officially supplied to Russian forces, unlike the deal with Kyiv that has allowed it to use the system since the start of the war. However, terminals have reached the front lines via a network of Russian importers and subscriber accounts in third countries, allowing troops to co-ordinate movements and drone strikes in areas where radios were susceptible to jamming.

Starlink loss has huge consequences for Russia

Musk’s decision to prevent access to Starlink satellites for any users in Ukraine not on a “whitelist” approved by the Ukrainian defence ministry has left the Russian army struggling to communicate with each other in huge areas – and it’s having enormous consequences on the battlefield.

Musk said on X following the cutoff: “Looks like the steps we took to stop the unauthorised use of Starlink by Russia have worked.”

Russia’s ability to capture territory has drastically dropped and Ukraine is beginning to gain ground for the first time in years. Meanwhile, the Russian casualty rate has escalated to the point where Putin’s military is now losing men faster than it can replace them, according to recent analysis.

This success on the battlefield owed much to the disruption caused by Russia’s loss of Starlink services, according to the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) think-tank in Washington DC. Short- and mid-range strikes by Russia’s elite Rubikon drone unit – which was using Starlink terminals to extend the ranges of its drones – were reportedly disrupted immediately, with Ukrainian officials reporting a sharp drop in Russian bombardments on frontline positions straight away.

In the first five days following the Starlink cutoff, Ukrainian forces reportedly liberated more than two hundred square kilometers of territory, roughly equivalent to the Russian army’s gains for the whole of December, the ISW reported.

“These Ukrainian counterattacks are likely leveraging the recent block on Russian forces’ access to Starlink, which Russian milbloggers have claimed is causing communications and command and control issues on the battlefield,” the think-tank said.

Pro-war Russian military bloggers embedded with frontline units have vented their fury over the move, because Moscow has no alternative that works as well as Starlink.

The loss of Starlink was compounded by decisions from the Kremlin to reduce other key communication tools such as Telegram and WhatsApp in an attempt to reduce security breaches.

“Russia has been going through this process of replacing messaging systems, pushing to internal messaging systems, and that’s a massive shift to try and roll out to the thousands and thousands of people that they have on the front,” said Melanie Garson adjunct fellow at the Council on Geostrategy and associate professor in international security and conflict resolution at University College London.

“To do that kind of rollout in the middle of active combat is extraordinarily difficult, and in May they were losing 1000 soldiers a day. It’s extraordinary and it’s not sustainable.”

How Ukraine capitalises on Starlink

For the Ukrainians, Russia’s communications struggles have been further exploited by their own use of Starlink and other technologies.

“Where Starlink is most important is communication and bandwidth for long-range drones”, said Marc DeVore senior lecturer at the University of St Andrews’ school of international relations and associate fellow at Chatham House’s Russia and Eurasia programme.

“The longer the range of the drone the more important Starlink is. Ukrainian long-range strike strategy depends on hitting high-value Russian targets at a distance and being able to communicate with your drone is vital,” he told The i Paper.

The importance of Starlink to Ukraine’s tactics is highlighted by the fact that some key Ukrainian weapons have a terminal built into them. But it is one thing having the tech, and another to use it effectively. And that is where the Ukrainian military has been so effective.

“I think that’s more a show of good intelligence on the side of Ukraine”, Katherine Spencer, programme assistant at the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center, told The i Paper.

“It’s intelligence-gathering, targeting, and having the drone technology. If Ukraine were to lose Starlink of course that would be very, very difficult, but it’s not just Starlink that is guiding these long-range attacks”, she said.

The Ukrainians are not just redesigning technology and tactics, but potentially defining what war will look like in the future. “Ukraine is integrating platforms, autonomous systems, and data to defend itself and also to strike Russia deep inside in its territory,” she said.

Orysia Lutsevych, head of the Ukraine Forum at Chatham House, described Ukraine’s successful innovation as “inventing a new way of fighting”.

“Strategically Ukraine’s internal innovation ecosystem is more important because it underpins battlefield success. If this didn’t exist, the fact that they’ve disconnected Starlink for the Russians would not help Ukraine much because it wouldn’t have capabilities to exploit that opportunity”, she explained.

Ukraine is seizing global opportunities

Furthermore, Lutsevych said President Volodymyr Zelensky’s refusal to accept a weak peace bargain that would undermine Ukrainian security, as well as his work developing alliances with countries in the Middle East based on sharing tactics learnt in battle, were other important factors in recent Ukrainian successes.

Garson agrees that Zelensky’s skilled diplomacy was contributing to tactical victories. “Zelensky seized the opportunity to make new contacts with the Gulf states who were looking to increase their defences,” she said

“These drone deals, will give another injection of cash into the Ukrainian military ecosystem which helps strengthen their approach as a whole.”

These incremental technical and diplomatic wins for Zelensky are adding up to a much bigger strategic advantage against a Kremlin war plan that is beginning to unravel, experts say, especially at a time when President Putin is facing mounting problems at home and increasing pressure to end the war.

“We are in the middle of what was supposed to be the Russian spring offensive,” said DeVore. “According to the Russian plan it was going to be the Ukrainians who were going to be struggling because of a lack of American support, their morale would be down due to the sheer length of the war and Russia was going to be able to hammer them and make significant gains which would then force the Ukrainians to capitulate on key issues.

“That was the Russian theory of victory, and as we can see right now every element of that has failed.”

However, George Barros, director of innovation and open source tradecraft at the ISW, warns it is inevitable the tide of the conflict will turn again as Russia learns from past mistakes.

“Given what we’ve seen from previous innovation cycles I think an optimistic assumption would be, the Ukrainians will have this advantage for a maximum of six months. The Russians will adapt”, he said.

Whether the momentum remains with Ukraine, or whether Russia seizes back the initiative, will depend on what European allies and the US do next, said Spencer and Lutsevych.

“The EU loan is a huge step in the right direction”, said Spencer. “But Ukraine still desperately needs stronger air defence and these are the kinds of technologies that they need from the US like Patriot missiles.”

“The joint ventures that are set up in Germany, in the UK, in Baltic states, in Finland, there give strategic depth to Ukraine with these production facilities protected on Nato territory, but they will be working for Ukraine” said Lutsevych.

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