Starshield speed limits aided Russian energy strikes, Zelenskyy says
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said speed limits on Starshield terminals along the front line and in temporarily occupied territories helped Russian Shahed drones hit Ukrainian energy substations. He posted on X that many of those strikes were getting through because the restrictions remained in place. Starshield is Starlink’s military-grade internet service. Starlink has denied throttling speeds; Elon Musk has suggested the United States military could be behind the slowdown and said last month that the United States government controls Starshield. Zelenskyy said on Saturday the limits had lasted five days and that Starlink blamed technical problems, which Ukraine does not accept. It is the second such outage in recent weeks.
Two people were killed on Saturday in a Russian drone attack on what Ukrainian officials called critical infrastructure in the northern Koriukivka region. Overnight on Sunday an energy facility in Odesa was hit, leaving 41,000 households without electricity, DTEK said. Ukraine’s army said it shot down 106 of 132 Russian drones launched overnight. Russia’s Defence Ministry said on Sunday it had targeted Ukrainian military airfields, munitions depots and other military sites.
Ukrainian drones also struck Russia: an electrical engineer was killed and four others were injured in the Taganrog region, and six people were injured in Nizhnekamsk. The Trans-Kama region of Tatarstan reported heavy attacks on industrial facilities and a residential building. US negotiators recently visited both countries seeking a ceasefire amid tension over Ukrainian strikes on Russian oil refineries. Zelenskyy said the United States floated Ukraine withdrawing remaining forces from eastern Donbas in exchange for NATO membership. Russia’s President Vladimir Putin is due to meet President Donald Trump and China’s President Xi Jinping in Shenzhen this week, with Ukraine not on the agenda. Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha dismissed Putin’s talk of reshaping Europe’s security order, saying ideas on the scale of Yalta in 1945 would first require winning a world war.
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