Ukraine's satellite link returns as Moscow agrees to new talks
A week after Kyiv's lowest point with Washington, Russia freed an American, agreed to talks in Abu Dhabi and accepted a truce for one occupied town.
Last week Hindsight reported Kyiv's relationship with Washington at its lowest point since February 2025: Ukraine's drones had lost speed on Starshield, the military version of SpaceX's Starlink satellite network, and Donald Trump had waived new sanctions on Russia. This week some of that pressure eased, and diplomacy began to move again.
The link comes back
On Saturday 24th October Ukraine's defence minister, Yevhenii Khmara, said the armed forces were again recording stable connections on drones and vehicles moving at more than 400 kilometres an hour. "The connection is stable," he said.1 Unnamed sources had told Reuters that during the limits, which began on 14th October, service had failed above about 160 kilometres an hour.1 Khmara credited "direct dialogue" with Washington, and said the link mattered "for our front, for the military, the work of drones, logistics and communications".2
Who ordered the limits is still disputed. Elon Musk, SpaceX's chief executive, had said they were set by the US military and ultimately the president; Reuters had reported, citing officials, that the order came from inside the White House; and Trump denied a role.2 On 23rd October Trump said: "if there is a problem, I'll get it straightened out."3
Hours after the link came back, Musk gave a different account. "Ukraine military violated Starlink terms of service and used it for offensive drone strikes to kill people. That loophole was closed last week," he wrote on X. The Associated Press reported this as an admission that SpaceX had throttled the civilian Starlink service, though Musk maintained that the US government controlled any changes to Starshield.4
The same day Reuters reported, citing six former senior US officials, that both the Biden and Trump administrations had for years asked SpaceX to switch Starlink on or off in particular places: off for terminals used by Hezbollah in Lebanon in 2023 and by the Houthis in Yemen in 2024, and on in Iran and Ukraine.3 SpaceX did not comment.
Canada's prime minister, Mark Carney, said in Istanbul that the slowdown had "real consequences, human consequences, direct casualties". He did not say who was responsible.5
Talks in Abu Dhabi
On Tuesday 21st October Trump's envoy, Steve Witkoff, met Vladimir Putin in St Petersburg. Putin agreed to resume three-way talks between American, Russian and Ukrainian officials, and Russia freed Stephen Hubbard, a 74-year-old American held since 2022.6 The Kremlin's spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said the talks were scheduled for the first half of November in Abu Dhabi.7
The release came with a darker account. Two Ukrainians who had shared cells with Hubbard told BBC News that guards had beaten him and used a stun gun and dogs on him. The allegations have not been independently verified.8
A truce for one town
On Thursday 23rd October the White House said that Melania Trump, acting as what it called an "Exclusive Intermediary", had secured a ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine limited to Oleshky.9 Oleshky is a town in the Kherson region, on the left bank of the Dnipro river opposite the Ukrainian-held city of Kherson. Russian forces have occupied it since February 2022, the first days of the full-scale invasion,10 and about 90% of it was flooded when the Kakhovka dam was destroyed in June 2023.9
"Oleshky is a front-line war city on the brink of disaster," Melania Trump said.9 According to the White House, between 1,700 and 2,000 residents remain, most of them elderly, including about 50 children. The ceasefire is meant to stop all military action in the town so that humanitarian aid can enter and civilians can leave through a safe corridor, to Russia or Ukraine as they choose.9
The White House said the truce would begin on 29th October.9 Russia's General Staff announced a "silence regime" from 04:00 Moscow time on 27th October,11 and Ukraine's General Staff confirmed a start at the same moment, according to the Kyiv Independent.12 Pope Leo XIV, the head of the Catholic Church, had asked Putin for a humanitarian ceasefire in Oleshky in a phone call on 16th October, and urged Volodymyr Zelenskyy to cooperate with Russia on aid three days later.13
The war continues
None of this has stopped the fighting. On the night of 23rd to 24th October Ukrainian drones caused a blackout across occupied Crimea,14 and Ukraine's General Staff said it had struck a petrochemical plant in Tolyatti, in Russia's Samara region; the Kyiv Independent could not verify that claim.15 At the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, the UK's representative said Russia had kept attacking Ukraine's energy system after the United States called for a halt, and said: "Only Ukraine can make decisions about its security and its sovereignty."16
What remains open is the substance. A ceasefire for one town of 2,000 people and an agreement to meet are not a settlement, and the questions that stalled earlier rounds, above all Russia's demand for the rest of the Donbas region, have not been answered. Nor is it settled who decides what Ukraine may use the satellite link for, now that the company that runs it says some of its uses broke the rules.