Starshield restrictions help Russia’s energy attacks on Ukraine: Zelenskyy

Starlink has recently denied restricting internet speeds but Elon Musk suggested the US military could be behind it.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said that speed restrictions by Starlink’s military-grade internet service had aided a wave of deadly Russian attacks across Ukraine.

Two people were killed on Saturday in a Russian drone attack on what Ukrainian officials called “critical infrastructure” in the northern Koriukivka region.

An energy facility was also hit in Odesa overnight on Sunday, leaving ۴۱,۰۰۰ households without electricity, Ukraine’s DTEK energy provider said in a Telegram statement.

Ukraine’s army said it shot down ۱۰۶ of ۱۳۲ Russian drones launched overnight.

Zelenskyy posted on X that Russia was targeting energy substations with Shahed drones, which both sides commonly attack each other with.

“And many of these strikes are getting through because restrictions on the operating speed of Starshield terminals along the front line and in the temporarily occupied territories are still there,” he posted, citing Starlink’s sister company and reiterating accusations that it was throttling internet speeds and hampering military operations.

The president said on Saturday that the internet restrictions had been in place for five days and that Starlink reported technical problems, but Ukraine does “not believe that is the case”.

It is the second such outage in recent weeks. Starlink, owned by US billionaire Elon Musk’s SpaceX, has denied restricting internet speeds. Last month, Musk said the United States government controls Starshield.

Tit-for-tat attacks

Russia’s Defence Ministry said on Sunday that it launched attacks targeting Ukraine’s military airfields, munitions depots and other military facilities.

Authorities also said that an electrical engineer was killed and four others were injured in Russia’s Taganrog region after Ukrainian drones attacked the area on Sunday.

Six people were injured in a drone attack in Nizhnekamsk, local officials said. The city, as well as the wider Trans-Kama region of Tatarstan, reported heavy Ukrainian attacks on industrial facilities and a residential building earlier on Sunday.

US negotiators concluded visits to both countries in recent days in attempts to secure a ceasefire, despite tensions between Washington and Kyiv over Ukrainian attacks on Russian oil refineries.

Zelenskyy said the US floated the idea of Ukraine withdrawing its remaining forces from the eastern Donbas region in exchange for NATO membership.

Russia’s President Vladimir Putin is due to meet President Donald Trump and China’s President Xi Jinping in the Chinese city of Shenzhen this week – but Ukraine is not on the agenda. Analysts have compared the meeting to the Yalta conference of ۱۹۴۵, which saw the US, UK and former Soviet Union divide Germany and establish the United Nations.

However, in a statement on Sunday, Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha, dismissed Russia’s longstanding proposal to revise Europe’s security architecture.

“Putin is throwing around ideas about reshaping the European security order. In his dreams, he sees himself in Yalta in ۱۹۴۵. The problem is that to put forward ideas of this magnitude, you first need to win a world war,” he said.