In Ukraine, civilian casualties were already rising. Restrictions on Starlink will only worsen the death toll

Throttling of mobile internet system will affect Kyiv’s air defences more than its strikes on oil refineries. Now Zelenskyy must be hoping that US intel holds

In Ukraine the situation was already jittery enough. Donald Trump has been inventing ceasefires and buying Russian diesel to shore up his flagging popularity, while a sinister new wave of faster, jet-powered drones are breaking through Kyiv’s stretched air defences. Casualties are rising as the weather turns.

Then, on Tuesday night, and without warning, Ukraine’s military found that Elon Musk’s Starlink mobile internet system, on which it heavily relies, had stopped working on its drones flying faster than 160km/h (100mph).

The immediate assumption in Kyiv is that the White House is once again trying to bully Ukraine into accepting an unattractive deal with Russia.

Even Serhii Beskrestnov, Zelenskyy’s high-profile military technology adviser, has expressed public doubts about whether the US had paused the sharing of missile detection. “Friends, this is not the first time that the launch of an S-400 has not been detected,” he posted on Monday. “We should not jump to conclusions.”

So it is hardly reassuring against the backdrop of White House threats, which have emerged every time a flailing Trump has tried to end the war in Ukraine.

“You don’t have the cards,” Trump said, as he took another away. Ukraine rapidly lost a chunk of territory it had occupied in Russia’s Kursk region before sharing was restored.

Russia has bombed two bridges in Kyiv, gas stations, city centre buildings and out-of-town warehouses, showing little restraint as it aims to harm Ukrainian civilians while it struggles to win the conventional war.

The effect of a more permanent halt to Starlink for Ukrainian drones or anything military that moves faster than 50mph is a little more complex. Starlink is how Ukraine directs many of its mid-strike (or mid-range) drones accurately towards their targets into occupied areas behind enemy lines, critical for helping the defenders maintain the rough balance on the front.

“There’s no meaningful effect on deep-strike operations,” one Ukrainian soldier said, while conceding there could be as much as a 30-fold drop in mid-strike operations because the alternatives are 30 times more expensive. Commanders are “replanning everything”, the soldier added, and aiming to find ways to carry on missions using different technologies and techniques.

The reality, then, is that the Starlink manoeuvre may not have much impact on oil prices, and only a limited effect on Ukraine’s frontline position, while putting the country’s civilians in greater danger.

Meanwhile, diplomatically, the situation is more finely poised. It was already the case that the Trump White House had proved to be a difficult and unreliable partner. What Zelenskyy, on a visit to London on Wednesday, needs from the likes of the UK prime minster, Andy Burnham, is pressure on the US to ensure the Starlink pause and whatever is happening with intelligence-sharing does not metastasise into a deeper crisis.