Relations between Washington and Kyiv came under heavy pressure this past week after US President Donald Trump lifted some oil sanctions against Russia. Concerns also grew that Ukraine’s access to American intelligence and satellite services had been restricted, which could weaken its defences.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told journalist Piers Morgan that it was a loss to lose a strong partner. He said it was painful that Trump had chosen one side rather than Ukraine’s, adding, “This is not [the] right side of history.” Even so, Ukrainian forces reported progress on the ground in the eastern Donetsk region.
Sanctions relief and a disputed intelligence gap
On October 9, Trump invited Russia to sell 1.8 million tonnes of diesel to the global market before the end of the year, with the aim of lowering transport costs. The move effectively undid part of the Lindsey Graham Act, a law Trump had signed only days earlier. That law gave him the power to hit countries that bought Russian oil with secondary sanctions.
Zelenskyy said Ukraine’s partners did not share intelligence showing that five ballistic missiles were heading for Kyiv on October 13. He did not name the United States directly. The missiles hit Kyiv’s Thermal Power Plant number 4, one of the largest in the capital, and caused power outages.
Russia then struck Ukraine’s electricity infrastructure again on October 14. That day, Ukraine reported that it had limited its use of SpaceX’s satellite navigation services, which it relies on for its own defence.
Starshield limits and the drone threat
Starshield, the military arm of SpaceX’s Starlink network, capped Ukraine’s use of its navigation services at 160 km/h (100mph). As a result, Ukraine lost the ability to guide interceptors travelling faster than that speed. That made it difficult or impossible to stop Russia’s jet-powered Geran-4 drones, which can fly faster than 500 km/h (310mph).
Zelenskyy said six in every ten Russian drones are now jet-powered. Over a 24-hour period, Russia launched 850 drones and 39 missiles, striking 30 energy targets across 19 regions of Ukraine. This happened even though Trump had declared an energy ceasefire on October 11.
Zelenskyy described the scale of the disregard for the United States as unprecedented. SpaceX owner Elon Musk wrote that the US government owns and controls Starshield, and that any limits on its speed or use are set by the US military and, ultimately, the president. Sources at Ukraine’s Ministry of Defence said Starshield services began returning to normal on October 15.
The disruption matters because Ukraine faces a heavy volume of aerial attacks. Its air force said it intercepted more than 4,700 drones and missiles of various kinds during September. This was not the first time services had been disrupted under the Trump administration, as the US had also stopped sharing intelligence with Ukraine in March, a period in which Russia regained its Kursk region, which Ukraine had earlier counter-invaded.
Ukraine’s push in Donetsk and Russia’s strained front
Despite these setbacks, Ukraine has continued to retake territory. Its Third Army Corps completed a fourth phase of Operation Vivaldi in the eastern Donetsk region, recapturing an additional 100 square kilometres (40 square miles), according to Corps commander Andrii Biletskyi. He said the operation had now regained 275 square kilometres (100 square miles) and 16 settlements since August, leaving Russia’s overall gains this year close to nil.
The campaign was designed to counter a Russian push to seize the town of Lyman. A separate counteroffensive further south targeted an attempted Russian takeover of Dobropillya. Ukraine viewed the two operations as part of an effort by Russia to encircle the “fortress cities” of Sloviansk and Kramatorsk in a pincer movement.
The Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank, said Russian forces averaged around 14 attacks per day in the Sloviansk direction in August 2026, five in September 2026, and three per day so far in October 2026. In the Kramatorsk direction, it said, the average fell from around three attacks a day in August 2026 to one in September 2026 and only 0.3 so far in October 2026.
Zelenskyy said Ukraine was stopping all attempts to advance or infiltrate, adding that its positions remained strong. He also said Russian forces outnumber Ukrainian troops six to eight times in parts of the front and appeared to have recently received reinforcements.
Russian casualties and Ukraine’s strikes on Russian targets
Robert Brovdi, commander of the Unmanned Systems Forces of Ukraine, said the increase in Russian personnel had translated into a significant rise in Russian casualties. He said these rose by 25 percent in the first two weeks of October compared with the same period in September, and by almost 60 percent compared with the first two weeks of August. In Dobropyllia, he said, casualties were higher than anywhere else on the front, running 43 percent above September’s rate and double the August rate.
Brovdi attributed part of Ukraine’s success to its production of domestically designed drones, made in partnership with European allies. Ukraine’s Defence Ministry said its orders for 2026 were half as high again as in 2025, and that delivery volumes were almost four times those of last year.
Ukraine observed Trump’s energy ceasefire for three days before returning to strikes on Russian refineries on October 15. It also kept hitting non-energy targets during the week. On October 9 it struck a facility making explosives and rocket fuel in Nizhny Novgorod, and a plant producing additives for missile fuels in the Tver region.
On October 15, Ukraine said it destroyed four Sukhoi fighters and damaged two more at the Borisoglebsk airfield in the Voronezh region. It also targeted three data centres owned by the Russian cloud services company Yandex, destroying or crippling those in Sasovo, Kaluga and Vladimir between October 8 and 11. A data centre owned by Sberbank was struck on October 14, and the attacks caused Russians to lose online payment and other services.
