The Ukrainian military has achieved its biggest territorial gains in more than two years, thanks in large part to billionaire Elon Musk's decision to cut off Russian access to Starlink in February.
With Russian commanders suddenly losing live drone feeds and secure battlefield communications, Ukrainian forces were able to advance on enemy positions with far less risk. Front-line soldiers said the loss of Starlink was critical to their counteroffensive.
"It came at a critical moment," a Ukrainian soldier told The Wall Street Journal. "Without Starlink, they were basically pushed back to Cold War-era communications."
Since the Starlink outage, Ukraine says it has retaken roughly 400 square km in the southern Zaporizhzhia and Dnipropetrovsk regions, where Russian forces had previously been advancing rapidly. February was the first month since 2023 that Kyiv regained more territory than it lost, according to open-source analysts.
Certain Russian equipment, including ground drones, also lost effectiveness when Starlink went offline. Soldiers were used to sending video confirmations of their positions to prove they hadn't deserted.
“With Starlink, they tightly controlled units,” an officer told the WSJ. “That level of control is now gone. Without Starlink, those soldiers are isolated. They don't know what's happening outside the houses where they're hiding.”
Across the front line, Russia still has the upper hand, with three times as many troops, according to Ukraine's top general. Emil Kastehelmi, co-founder of the Black Bird Group, said most of the land Ukraine regained is open fields and small villages. Still, the gains have boosted morale for a country that has endured more than four years of war and a harsh winter with widespread power and heating cuts.
For years, Starlink had become essential to both sides. Russian commanders relied on it to watch live drone feeds, direct attacks instantly, and coordinate troops across the battlefield. “Before, if the enemy spotted our group, even a single soldier, they wouldn't let him go. They would throw everything at him,” said a Ukrainian commander.
The sudden outage caught Russian forces off guard. Troops repeatedly tried to reboot terminals, which allowed Ukrainian forces to detect and strike them. Radio traffic replaced Starlink, but unlike encrypted satellite communications, Ukraine could intercept it.
Ukraine also exploited the chaos by attacking Russian rear positions, making Moscow forces believe larger breakthroughs had occurred. Moscow is now attempting workarounds, including short-range wireless networks and other satellite services, but Ukrainian forces say none are as effective as Starlink.
“Russian forces try to adapt by employing mesh networks and modems, but Starlink was a cheap and effective solution,” said Michael Kofman, senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
