KYIV, Ukraine -- As six Ukrainian drones buzzed toward a Russian army warehouse in occupied eastern Ukraine on Monday, the pilots found their connections disrupted.
Any time they flew faster than 100 miles an hour, the video feed cut out -- the result of new limits put in place last week for Ukrainian drones using Starshield, a military version of Elon Musk's Starlink satellite-internet service. Musk himself imposed the limits, The Wall Street Journal has reported.
Four drones made it to the vicinity of the target. One hit the warehouse. The unit's commander said he didn't know what happened to the other drones because the pilots lost contact with them.
For the past week, drones have had to fly more slowly, the commander said -- and as a result, the Russians are shooting them down more often.
The disruption to Ukraine's use of Starshield is having a significant impact on Kyiv's defenses against Russia's invasion, according to Ukrainian military units and military analysts.
Ukrainian drone forces have grown dependent on access to Starshield, a military-grade subscription service that uses the same kinds of terminals as Starlink, SpaceX's commercial satellite-internet service, but offers higher capabilities for military use.
Unlike normal Starlink connections, there were no speed restrictions with Starshield -- until last week. The system is crucial for midrange drone strikes, which have been successfully targeting the Russian army's logistics throughout this year, helping Ukraine to hold off Moscow's army and limit it to only minimal advances in 2026.
That successful defense is now at risk if the restrictions on Starshield persist, Ukrainian officers and military analysts warn.
Starshield is also used for air-defense interceptor drones that shoot down Russia's jet-powered Geran drones, which are terrorizing Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities. Without unfettered use of Starshield, Ukrainian air-defense officers say they will struggle to protect Ukrainian civilians against airstrikes.
Some drones using Starshield are losing connection at speeds as slow as 80 mph, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Monday.
Zelensky said Tuesday that he had discussed the issue with Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Starshield, said Zelensky, "needs to be restored."
Musk, chief executive of SpaceX, said last week that Starshield access was controlled by the U.S. government. SpaceX hasn't so far responded to requests for comment on the Journal's reporting that Musk had ordered the slowdown. U.S. officials have denied that the White House ordered the restrictions.
"We are still waiting for the official response from contacts with the Pentagon and SpaceX at the leaders level to understand what has happened," Ukraine's top diplomat in Washington, Denys Sienik, said Tuesday.
"Space X must urgently restore full services for Ukraine, because Ukraine needs this critical information to keep soldiers connected, to protect its citizens but also to pilot the drones needed to defend its territory," a European Union spokesman told reporters on Wednesday.
The war has shown the urgency of Europe doing more to develop its own space capabilities, the spokesman said.
Musk has angered Kyiv in the past by limiting Starlink access. In the fall of 2022, Ukrainian forces complained of widespread Starlink connection failures in southern and eastern Ukraine, which hindered their counteroffensives to take back Russian-occupied territory. The Ukrainians forced the Russians to retreat in the Kherson and Kharkiv regions anyway.
Musk also denied a Ukrainian request in 2022 to use Starlink in the Russian-occupied Crimea peninsula, hampering Ukrainian attempts to hit the Russian navy. Musk said it would have involved SpaceX in an escalation of the war.
As Kyiv and Washington continue tense discussions over a variety of issues -- including President Trump's moves to relax sanctions on Russia -- Ukrainian forces on the battlefield are now trying to fight without flying their drones at top speed.
For much of this year, access to SpaceX's Starlink satellite network gave Ukraine a big advantage. At the start of February, SpaceX allowed only Starlink accounts on an approved "white list" to access the service in Ukraine, effectively ending Russian forces' unauthorized use of Starlink.
Ukraine's military communications rely heavily on the commercial version of Starlink. On a drone or vehicle, the connection cuts out at around 50 mph.
Until last week, Starshield offered a fast, reliable connection for drones all over Ukraine, including on missions that took them deep into occupied territory. Starlink doesn't work inside Russia, so Ukraine's military has used other navigation methods for its long-range drone raids there, including strikes against oil refineries.
On the night of Oct. 13, without warning, that connection started to drop.
The commander of a Ukrainian drone-interceptor unit, who goes by the call sign Sokol, said the biggest challenge his team now faces is jet-powered long-range Geran drones, which can reach speeds of as much as 370 mph. That speed has turned them into one of the foremost threats for Ukrainian civilians because they are much harder to shoot down than previous, propeller-powered Russian drones.
Sokol said his interceptor drones can fly at around 250 mph. Despite the disadvantage, they are still able to take out some of the Gerans. But the task becomes much more difficult if an interceptor drone can only fly at 90 mph, he said. "It's a serious limitation."
"What concerns me most is how dependent we are on a technology that we don't control," he said.
Ukraine has few good options for replacing Starshield, said Michael Kofman, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank. Other ways to control drones, such as mesh modem networks or mobile LTE networks, are more expensive than Starlink and come with other disadvantages, including communication lags.
"It's a very serious problem," Kofman said. "Other mechanisms would be difficult and expensive to scale."
The Russians have noticed the difference. One prominent Russian military blogger posted on Telegram Monday that a key highway in occupied territory had been relatively free from drone attacks in recent days.
The commanders of several Ukrainian drone teams that conduct midrange strikes said that nearly all of their missions involve Starshield, and that they are struggling to adjust to life without it, mostly by flying slower.
One unit commander, known by his call sign Brut, said that in the first few days after the speed restriction was imposed, his team didn't fly any missions at all as it tried to figure out what was wrong. Since then, it has resumed operating, setting its drones to fly at 85 mph, instead of 100 mph as before. Even then, said Brut, the connection sometimes cuts.
During a mission to strike an air-defense system in Russian-occupied Crimea several days ago, he said, the pilot could barely see the drone's video feed for the entire flight. The drone continued toward the target on autopilot, but there was no way to evade potential obstacles along the way.
"We knew it was programmed to fly to certain coordinates, but we didn't know if it would make it or not," he said. In the end, he said, it hit the target.
At ranges of more than about 70 miles, there is no substitute for Starshield, said the commander of a drone unit on the eastern front. Even if an alternative is found, many drones designed to fly with Starshield would have to be sent back to their manufacturers and reconfigured, he said.
In the past, he said his drones could maneuver to evade Russian air defenses, for instance, by going into a steep dive. Now, that means losing connection.
"The number of drones being shot down has increased," he said.