An AI generated video depicting a Russian satellite crashing into a Finnish spy satellite providing intelligence to Ukraine's militayr has been doing the rounds on social media.
Fears of a real-world Star Wars breaking out between East adn West followed a Russian military satellite that came within roughly 5km of a Finnish-built radar satellite on October 17, in a manoeuvre space trackers called "unusual." The satellite is part of a network that has supported Ukraine, but it is unclear whether this specific craft does, Axios reported.
Is Russia developing "killer satellites" as the competition between Elon Musk’s Starlink, and its military appendage Starsheild comes into focus in the last week after the Trump administration throttled the service putting Ukraine’s drone fleet out of action. At the same time Russia is rolling out its own version, Rassvet, that is developing much faster than expected and should be fully operational by 2027. The EU has also said this week it needs its own military satellite network but has got no further than discussing plans.
Russia's Cosmos 2612 closed from more than 320km away to roughly 5km from ICEYE-X36 in a single day, Axios reported, citing the US tracking company LeoLabs, which said the manoeuvre appeared to be a deliberate approach and warranted monitoring even though the intent was unclear. Clayton Swope, a space fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), described the distance as "bumper-to-bumper" in orbital terms. The Pentagon and ICEYE declined to comment.
Satellites have become a front line in the war and Bankova has warned that if Russia's Rassvet becomes fully operational then it will make Russia’s increasingly powerful drones to fly unimpeded over its entire territory, effectively making them unjammable.
The two satellites circle at about 545km. Orbital modelling published by the tracking site Orbital Radar projects repeated close passes, with one on October 19 at a predicted miss distance of about 150 metres. Commentators online asked whether Moscow means to disable the satellite or simply park beside it as a warning. Nobody outside the Kremlin knows, the threat is clear and Putin usually builds his threats in small steps before carrying through on them.
This is not the first time this has happened. Four satellites, Cosmos 2610 to Cosmos 2613, launched from Plesetsk on April 17 and began closing on ICEYE-X36 from mid-May, coming within 13km, Der Spiegel reported in June.
"Russia's 'Kosmos' satellites, from their current positions, can intercept or jam ICEYE's signals. They might even physically damage it," Juliana Suess of the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP) told the magazine, adding that the aim could be "a temporary loss of data for Ukraine".
Major General Michael Traut, head of Germany's Space Command, told Reuters on October 9 that Russia was "chasing" the ICEYE satellite and that the same tactic used against Starlink could hit "their lifetime", by forcing operators into fuel-hungry avoidance manoeuvres. The Finnish company, which now runs a satellite technology centre in Warsaw, has supplied Ukraine with synthetic aperture radar imagery since 2022, when a crowdfunded satellite helped Ukraine destroy Russian military equipment by the thousand.
Russia's own Starlink
Russia's own low-orbit network is arriving faster than expected. Pictures circulating on social media this month reportedly show a flat satellite antenna bearing the logo of Bureau 1440, the developer of the Rassvet constellation, recovered from a downed Russian drone.
An antenna panel bearing the Bureau 1440 logo, reportedly recovered from a downed Russian drone in Ukraine. Source: social media
Serhiy Beskrestnov, the Zelenskiy adviser on military technology known as "Flash", told the Associated Press on October 16 that Rassvet is "danger No. 1 among the technological challenges Russia poses to us right now". He said the connection is currently available for only 30 to 40 minutes a day when the satellites pass over Ukraine, and that within about six months coverage could let Russian operators control drones and missiles in real time across the whole country.
That matters because satellite links are far harder to jam than radio. Russia lost its main satellite crutch in February, when SpaceX blocked unregistered Starlink terminals used by Russian troops and Beskrestnov said Russian units had "lost all control" in places. Rassvet is Moscow's fix.
But Rassvet's rollout has been bumpy. None of the 16 satellites launched on July 19 reached their planned orbit and one satellite from the March batch has already deorbited, The Bell reported in September. Bureau 1440 has since started work on next-generation Rassvet satellites and still aims to offer round-the-clock broadband in 2027, a year after Russia's answer to Starlink took off with its first 16 production satellites in March. Moscow has tripled its Rassvet deployment plan to 886 satellites by 2030, though Starlink already has more than 10,000 in orbit.
Starlink throttled
Ukraine's own satellite lifeline is still working properly, despite US assurances full serivce has been restored. SpaceX imposed an unannounced speed cap on Ukraine's military Starshield terminals overnight on October 13-14, disrupting attack and air-defence drone missions. A defence ministry source said on October 15 that service had been fully restored.
President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on October 17 that it had not. Terminals cut out above 161 km/h, and "exceeding this limit causes the Starlink connection to cut out completely, resulting in the loss of the drone," he told reporters in answers sent over WhatsApp and posted by journalist Christopher Miller. Interceptor drones chasing Russian Shaheds need more than 400 km/h, the Associated Press reported, and Kyiv is asking for a 450 km/h ceiling, defence ministry sources told the Kyiv Post.
Kyiv ran its own test. "We sent a couple of vehicles equipped with Starlink terminals into European Union territory. They moved at speeds exceeding 180kph, and the Starlink systems worked perfectly. We have the relevant logs and evidence to prove this," Zelenskiy said. "The conclusion is clear: the restrictions are in effect within Ukraine but do not apply within the European Union. In other words, this is a planned operation."
The cap lands as Russia speeds up its drones. Russian outlets reported on October 16, citing Ukrainian military channels, that the jet-powered Geran-5 had reached 700-800 km/h over Ukraine, well above the roughly 600 km/h previously cited, after Moscow began building jet-powered Geran-4 drones to outrun interceptors.
Who pulled the plug
Nobody in Washington will own the decision. The order came from inside the White House, Reuters reported on October 16, and a senior Ukrainian official told the agency that Kyiv had been told the slowdown was a White House decision when it called the White House, State Department and Pentagon. A senior US official told Reuters: "No such request was ever made by the president."
The Telegraph, citing four sources, reported the same day that Musk had approached President Donald Trump with the idea of capping speeds and that Trump agreed. "The reality is that they were both in it," one source told the paper. Trump said on October 16 he did not think either he or Musk was responsible.
Musk has pointed at the government. "Starshield systems are owned and controlled by the US government. Any limits on speed or usage are decided by the US military and ultimately POTUS," he wrote on X on October 14. In posts on X he also wrote: "It is a violation of commercial Starlink terms of service to use the terminal for weapon systems... There is a separate network called Starshield, which is operated by the US government. This is not under SpaceX control," and "Starlink needs to be a civilian network, not a participant to combat. Starshield will be owned by the US government and controlled by DoD Space Force. This is the right order of things."
Elon Musk's posts on X on Starlink and Starshield. Source: X
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio muddied the picture further on October 17. "Starlink is a commercial product... Starshield is a defence product, a military product," he told reporters at Joint Base Andrews, saying Ukraine does not have Starshield and had asked for it to conduct deep strikes inside Russia. "They do not have access to it at this moment. That's under conversation," he said, and "No one at the White House ordered anyone to slow down internet," Al Jazeera reported. That sits awkwardly with Musk's own statement and with Ukrainian officials, who have described the throttled military terminals as Starshield all week. Musk has refused Ukraine Starlink for deep strikes before. Zelenskiy has taken a harsher line, accusing Trump of “betraying” Ukraine in its hour of need.
The cap arrived as Trump waived sanctions on Russian diesel to ease fuel prices before the November 3 US midterm elections, and as Washington pressed Kyiv to stop striking Russian refineries, Reuters reported. If the order did come from the White House, it would mean Washington actively blunting Ukraine's air defence just as Russia's winter bombardment gathers momentum rather than simply withholding help.
Europe's plan B is still a plan
The lesson for Europe is that commercial, and especially US, operators can be switched down at a moment's notice. "Starlink is really necessary for Ukraine and unfortunately in the short term Europe can't replace this capability," EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas told reporters on October 16.
The European Commission is in talks to fully associate Ukraine with GOVSATCOM, an EU scheme that pools government satellite capacity, and could add commercial services in early 2027, spokesperson Thomas Regnier said on October 15, the Kyiv Post reported. The EU's own IRIS2 constellation of some 300 satellites is not due to be fully operational until 2029-2030. Germany, which pays for some of Ukraine's terminals, said the restrictions "must be lifted", Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul told broadcaster ntv.
Poland wants its own system too as part of its plan to build up the largest conventional army in Europe. Deputy Defence Minister Cezary Tomczyk said on October 17 that Warsaw would develop an alternative to Starlink, possibly with European partners, that initial offers had been received and funding secured, and that a formal announcement could follow within months, according to Polish media reports. The project is still at the planning stage. State arms group PGZ and ICEYE signed a letter of intent in September on a military satellite communications system, MILSATCOM, due to be fully deployed by the end of 2030, Carpatia Biznes reported. The ground war has reached satellites too: Russian intelligence may have hired a Turkish gang to torch Poland's Starlink station, and masked men set fire to 11 Starlink antennas at a site near Sofia in Bulgaria on October 9, Meduza reported.
France may provide a stop-gap solution. President Emmanuel Macron told the French military on January 15 that "two-thirds" of the intelligence Ukraine receives from partners was now provided by France, a claim that has never been independently confirmed and that Kyrylo Budanov, now head of Zelenskiy's office, disputed in December, saying Kyiv still relied critically on Washington.
Zelenskiy said on October 16 that Ukraine was working with countries including France on additional satellite capabilities but that this would not be "a complete replacement", Eunews reported. Imagery and intelligence, which Kyiv has drawn on as alternative European satellite data since the 2025 US freeze, are not the same as the broadband data links that steer drones in flight, and Europe has nothing yet that does that at Starlink's scale.