Ukraine and Russia race to build military satellite networks as Starlink falters

What put two rival constellations into orbit in the same autumn?

On 1 October 2026, a 10-kilogram test satellite called Obria Nano rode a SpaceX Falcon 9 into low Earth orbit. Built by the Ukrainian defence firm Himera and Denmark’s GomSpace, it is the first piece of a sovereign Ukrainian military network meant to break Kyiv’s near-total dependence on Elon Musk’s Starlink. Twenty-six days later, the two companies announced the satellite was operating in orbit and testing its systems. In mid-October, Kyiv signed Finland’s Nokia and the satellite-imaging firm ICEYE to explore a second, larger network. And on 9 November, Ukraine’s parliament advanced legislation to create Space Forces as a new branch of the armed forces.

Russia is moving in parallel, and with less success: its Rassvet constellation has put 32 satellites into orbit this year and lost two of them. The trigger arrived on 12 November, when President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Starshield, the military version of Starlink, had been speed-limited again, capped at 161 kilometres per hour, disrupting operations along the entire front line for several days. The renewed cap surfaced a day after two days of US-brokered talks in Abu Dhabi ended, the same talks in which Washington floated trading Donbas for NATO membership.

What is confirmed about each side’s network?

For Ukraine, the confirmed facts are narrow but concrete. Obria Nano flew on SpaceX’s Transporter-18 rideshare mission on 1 October and began returning telemetry on its second day in orbit, according to Himera’s founder, Misha Rudominskyi. Registered as UASAT-NANO, the 10-kilogram craft is a technology demonstrator, and its one-year test programme is meant to shape a full constellation whose size, capacity and funding have not been disclosed. The Defence Ministry signed a letter of intent with ICEYE and Nokia in mid-October, and a second Ukrainian company, Stetman, is planning its own low-orbit network under the UaSat LEO project.

For Russia, the numbers are public and unflattering. Bureau 1440, the company building Rassvet, launched 16 satellites on 23 March and 16 more on 19 July, both batches aboard Soyuz-2.1b rockets from Plesetsk. Two have burned up, the first on 6 June, the second on 30 October, after failing to fire their thrusters. About 30 remain in orbit, most near 500 kilometres, against a published roadmap of 156 by the end of 2026, 292 by 2027 and 900 by 2035. On the Starlink side, the pattern is now documented twice: caps in mid-October, service restored on 24 October, and on 12 November Zelenskyy said the 161 km/h limit was back; the same limit Kyiv reported during the previous Starshield disruption. Two US senators have demanded that Musk and SpaceX preserve all documents about the restrictions.

What remains unproven about the satellites and the switch?

Almost everything that would let a reader judge whether either network works is still undisclosed. Himera and GomSpace have not published Obria Nano’s specifications, its communications capacity, its orbit or its frequency band, and no independent confirmation of its in-orbit performance exists; all statements about it come from the two companies. It is not known how many satellites the full Obria constellation would need, what it would cost, or when the next launch would fly.

On the Russian side, Al Jazeera reports that the Rassvet satellites are Chinese-made Qianfan units, but no Russian source has confirmed the origin, and Moscow has said nothing official about the two lost satellites. Ukraine’s military intelligence says Moscow already uses Rassvet for military communications and plans to link it to missile targeting, including Iskander-M command vehicles; unverified. Above all, nobody outside SpaceX and the US government has explained the caps. Musk first blamed the Pentagon, and acknowledged his own part only after the Wall Street Journal reported that he had personally authorised the October slowdown; in November, a SpaceX spokesperson denied any change at all. Whether the Senate’s document demand produces answers is an open question.

Why does a satellite cap change the shape of a land war?

Because the war’s nervous system now runs through orbit, and the switch sits in one man’s hands. Ukraine’s drones, its artillery coordination, its front-line hospitals and its government all run on Starlink, a constellation of more than 10,000 satellites that no Ukrainian institution controls. When the limit hit in mid-October, the effect was immediate: on the first day, recorded hits on Russian equipment fell by 71 percent, according to The Insider, and interceptor drones flying faster than 161 km/h lost their links; exactly the speed needed to catch Russia’s jet-powered Shahed drones. A country that cannot talk to its own weapons cannot fight, and a supplier who can slow the network can shape the battlefield without firing a shot.

The same logic drives Moscow: Russia lost access to grey-market Starlink terminals when SpaceX disabled them in February, and its answer is a domestic constellation it cannot yet keep in orbit. Geopolitically, the episode has turned a commercial service into a lever of statecraft, Washington’s lever, since Starshield is operated for the Pentagon, and shown every other military the price of renting communications from a single private vendor. Economically, the gap is stark: a Starlink terminal costs up to $500 and sees some five dozen satellites at once, while the nearest rival, OneWeb, costs $9,000 a terminal and shows eleven. Technologically, the war is now a contest over who owns the sky above the battlefield, and the answer this autumn is: nobody yet, except SpaceX.

What does the race actually prove about who controls the war from orbit?

It proves that neither side controls it yet, and that the one company which does is not a combatant. Anatoly Zak, a US-based space expert, puts the timeline bluntly: building a genuinely new system takes several years, and for the next year or two Starlink and Starshield are “absolutely necessary” for Ukraine. The alternatives on the table are all slower or smaller. Pavel Luzin of the Jamestown Foundation sketches two paths for Kyiv: heavy, expensive satellites in geostationary orbit that could serve for twenty years, or hundreds of cheaper low-orbit satellites that must constantly be replaced as the atmosphere drags them down; plus cheaper stopgaps such as stratospheric drones acting as “quasi-satellites”, AI-guided drones that need less satellite help, and ballistic missiles that need none at all.

None of it is quick or cheap: the full Obria network would take one to two years “under favourable conditions”, in Himera’s own estimate, and Russia’s roadmap stretches to 2035. The deeper proof is commercial. Starlink’s scale, more than 10,000 satellites, a $500 terminal, five dozen spacecraft visible at once, is the product of a decade of launches no state programme in this war can match in a year. The race is real, but for now it is a race to escape a dependency, not a race that has been won.

What happens if the cap stays and the constellations stall?

Three consequences follow. First, the battlefield effect compounds: every day the 161 km/h limit stands, interceptor drones cannot reach the speed needed to down jet-powered Shaheds, and more Russian strikes get through; Zelenskyy’s own warning from the Dublin summit where he raised the cap, where he called the restriction “a very bad signal”. Second, the politics harden. The Senate’s document demand turns a technical dispute into a legal one, and SpaceX’s denial that anything changed sits uneasily beside Kyiv’s day-by-day reports; if the documents show a deliberate slowdown, the argument over who controls Starshield becomes a public fight in Washington. Third, the precedent spreads. Every military watching this war has just learned that renting communications from a single foreign vendor means accepting that vendor’s politics, and Europe’s two Ukrainian-backed efforts, Obria and the Nokia-ICEYE design work, are only the first answers. Russia, for its part, will keep launching: Bureau 1440’s plan calls for 156 satellites by the end of the year, and each failure teaches it something even as each lost satellite advertises the gap. The quietest second-order effect may be the strangest: Putin’s public courtship of Musk, and the idea, floated by Moscow itself, that Russia and SpaceX should coordinate in orbit rather than collide there.

What should readers watch in the coming days?

First, the sky over the front line: whether the Starshield speed limit is still in place tomorrow, and whether SpaceX or the Pentagon offers any explanation beyond the denial already issued. Second, the launch manifests: whether Bureau 1440 can put up more Rassvet satellites before the year ends, and whether any more of them fail to climb. Third, Obria Nano’s test results; Himera says the first findings will take months, and the one-year test programme is the real clock on Ukraine’s independence. Fourth, the Rada’s Space Forces legislation, which would give Ukraine’s orbital ambitions a branch of their own. And fifth, the Senate’s document demand: whether Musk and SpaceX hand over the records, and what they show about the October slowdown. The diplomacy around the war is moving too: Europe has named its team for the Ukraine peace talks, and the next round will test whether the satellite question stays a technical dispute; or becomes a bargaining chip.