Ukraine pushes Russia back on front line where Starlink has played key role

Ukraine drives Russian forces back on the front line, with Starlink playing a crucial role

A Russian drone streaks across the computer screen, startling the commanders who are monitoring the battlefield through a live stream in their bunker.

With a cigarette in one hand and a radio in the other, one of them orders their own drone to take it down and alerts the soldiers below to the danger. The men are perilously exposed during the long walk across open ground from their front-line positions. They are being rotated out after three months of pushing the Russians back.

This is part of Operation Vivaldi, a Ukrainian counter-offensive that they say has liberated 277 sq km (106 square miles) in the eastern Donbas region in recent months.

The name refers to the offensive’s four stages, or seasons, like the Italian composer’s violin concerto. The successful attack disrupted an attempted Russian pincer movement that threatened to surround the key Fortress Belt cities still under Ukrainian control.

While Russia this month is hammering Ukraine from the air, damaging its energy infrastructure and killing scores of civilians across the country, Ukraine has made recent gains at the front. Kyiv says it has inflicted heavy losses — 8,000 Russian casualties in Vivaldi alone, and close to 50,000 along the front in the month of September — while suffering few casualties itself.

The Starlink system was integrated into Ukraine’s Operation Vivaldi, but this week Kyiv said restrictions had been imposed on it without warning.

The Institute for the Study of War reported that pro-Russian military bloggers had acknowledged the Ukrainian advances and voiced fears that this could lead to further Russian losses in the future. No Russian official has publicly acknowledged the Ukrainian gains. Russian ministry of defence briefings say only that they were “repelling attacks” in the Lyman region, or “improving the tactical position at the front”.

Even with Ukraine’s forward movement, Russian drones remain constantly present. Phoenix, Commandant of the Revenge Brigade’s Silver Trinity unit, says his men face 10 on an average day.

Ukraine’s military says it has liberated 277 sq km in the eastern Donbas region.

He is locked onto the live stream as a Ukrainian snare drone swoops in, hovers for a few seconds and drops a net onto the drone, pulling it out of the sky. This Russian drone was for reconnaissance, but if it had locked onto the soldiers, another drone carrying explosives would have followed.

This moment of danger shows the layers that make up the modern battlefield. The command bunker receives live images from a hovering camera, while below a Ukrainian attack drone strikes another enemy spotter that would have called in more flying firepower.

Integrated into all of this is Starshield, the military version of Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite communications network, which provides broadband connectivity across the battlefield.

Ukraine said this week, as Operation Vivaldi ended, that the system had restrictions imposed without warning, limiting its capability.

Musk and media reports suggest the order may have come from the White House. While Ukraine is not entirely dependent on Starshield, it is a key weapon in its arsenal, vital for interceptor and mid-range strike drones. And the knowledge that this tool can be restricted without warning or consultation has caused major concern in Ukraine.

Below the struggle for aerial dominance, unmanned ground vehicles move back and forth delivering supplies, evacuating the wounded or, increasingly, leading the assault against the enemy.

Everything here depends on digital connectivity — to see, to move, to fly, to communicate, to fire. But at the bottom of this stack, it is still human beings in trenches who are holding the ground.

The exhausted soldiers have reached the command post safely. After 95 days of advancing on the front line, there is an emotional reunion.

Dealer, a soldier in the Revenge Brigade’s Silver Trinity unit, has just come off the front line.

An infantryman with the call-sign Dealer tells me he feels strong, but is glad to finally be heading home: “It’s an impressive operation. Over three months, we moved positions four times.”

He says the most frightening threat was Russian drones, remotely piloted and determined to hunt down their target.

Commandant Phoenix said the preparation for the offensive was “enormous”.

“The men trained for months. We had to completely restructure our approach because previously we had been defending, and now we had to go on the offensive.”

Robots and drones led the assault on Russian positions and, for the first time, remote-controlled explosive vehicles were dropped behind Russian lines — 250 Russians surrendered. According to Ukrainian commanders, their year-long campaign has freed 16 settlements from Russian occupation.

In Karpivka, a village occupied since April, the Ukrainians found one local resident still there — 61 year old Volodymyr Zamota, the last man standing when his neighbours fled the Russian advance in 2025. He says he survived for eight months in total isolation.

“As they say, hope dies last,” he told me. “I’m the only person left in the whole village, and the village has been almost completely destroyed.”

“I thought I would live to old age without experiencing anything like this, but then it happened. It’s a terrible tragedy”.

That destruction defines the region Ukraine has just recaptured. It is still too dangerous for residents to return, even if they have a home left intact. But Ukraine’s soldiers are celebrating the regained ground, the halted Russian advance and the future potential this operation may offer.

“The real value of this is securing advantageous positions, favourable lines, and a bridgehead that grants us a superior position,” Andriy Hitt, Revenge Bridge chief of staff, explained.

“This allows us to create the necessary conditions for subsequent successful operations, seize the initiative in battle, and plan future successful manoeuvres… each of these actions is a building block towards victory.”

All of this could be threatened by restrictions on US technology and American intelligence. Relations between Kyiv and Washington are at an all-time low.

This week President Zelensky said he felt “betrayed” by Donald Trump, while the US leader said he was “not a fan” of his Ukrainian counterpart, adding that he was harder to deal with than Vladimir Putin.

Trump says Ukraine’s strikes on Russian oil refineries have pushed up oil prices. Ukraine says the US and Israeli war against Iran is the reason.

But despite the diplomatic split, morale is high among the soldiers we met. Dealer says Operation Vivaldi has renewed his belief that Ukraine can win the war.

The unit is making sure Volodymyr, Grandpa as they call him, has enough to eat — drones drop off food parcels on their way to feed soldiers at the front.

I asked Volodymyr whether he believed Ukraine could win. “Yes, of course I do. I would just like to know when it will happen, when all of this will finally end.”