Russian drones knocked out Kyiv data centers serving 100,000 households, and the same night a fire disabled a Starlink ground station in Poland that Warsaw says was set to cut the Ukrainian army's internet.
European financing and Ukrainian arms production constrain Washington’s ability to impose a bargain, while US weapons, intelligence and commercial services preserve US leverage.
Russia's answer to Starlink is not a jammer. Kalinka listens for the uplink a terminal sends to the satellite and works out where the operator is sitting — turning a communications link into a targeting cue.
Kyiv wants to strike the launchers behind Russia's ballistic attacks, but SpaceX controls whether its drones can cross the border with satellite guidance.
Volna Kupol Garant ("Wave Dome Guarantor") is Russia's trailer-mounted electronic-warfare complex built to jam Starlink's Ku-band uplink, denying Ukraine's Starlink-guided strike drones their control link across a roughly 20-square-kilometer bubble.
Russia has begun fielding Volna Kupol Garant jammers that blank Starlink over 20 square kilometers, the network most of Ukraine's long-range strike drones fly on, Reuters reports, but the complexes radiate a signature loud enough to become targets.
After SpaceX cut Russian forces' unauthorized Starlink access, upgraded Ukrainian drones evade jamming and keep Russia's supply lines under fire deep behind the front.
Russia is copying the naval-drone war Ukraine invented, and the smuggled Starlink terminals on its destroyed attack boats show it still has no control link of its own.