On February 26, 2022, two days after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the country’s minister of digital transformation sent a public message to Elon Musk on Twitter asking for Starlink. Within 48 hours, the first terminals arrived in Ukraine.
Russia’s opening moves in the war followed a familiar script: sever fibre-optic routes, strike mobile towers, disable infrastructure, isolate the population and flood the information vacuum with Russian state media. What Russia did not anticipate was that Ukraine could route around all of it — not by rebuilding on the ground but by looking up. Low-Earth orbit (LEO) satellite systems, owned and operated by foreign commercial actors, allowed Ukraine to maintain connectivity independent of any terrestrial network Russia could destroy.
For the first time, LEO had become a theatre of war, with Ukraine becoming a testing ground for the future of warfare.
Innovation Amid War
Before 2022, Ukraine’s internet infrastructure relied primarily on terrestrial fibre and mobile networks. The country had extensive broadband coverage and high 4G penetration, while satellite communications were limited largely to geostationary services for broadcasting. Ukraine did not operate its own LEO satellite constellation, and frontline connectivity in eastern Ukraine was often dependent on aging and unstable 2G and 3G mobile networks.
That changed rapidly after Russia’s invasion. Following then-Minister of Digital Transformation Mykhailo Fedorov’s request for Starlink access from Musk, the first shipment of terminals arrived in Ukraine within two days. Emergency regulatory approvals followed in April 2022, authorizing Starlink use for critical infrastructure and later for broader civilian deployment under martial law.
The speed of the rollout reflected operational necessity. Restoring fibre-optic connectivity in active combat zones was often impossible, while mobile networks remained highly vulnerable to strikes and blackouts. LEO satellite systems, by comparison, offer low-latency communications independent of terrestrial infrastructure, making them uniquely suited for battlefield coordination and drone operations.
Starlink quickly became central to Ukraine’s wartime communications architecture. There are as many as 200,000 terminals currently active in Ukraine, with thousands being used by the Ukrainian Armed Forces. Satellite connectivity now supports military command and control, drone operations, emergency services, hospitals, municipalities and civilian internet access during outages.
Importantly, these systems are being used not only inside government-controlled Ukraine but also in contested and occupied territories, where communications infrastructure has become part of the broader struggle over information control and governance. For example, portable satellite terminals enabled Ukrainian military units and local administrations in frontline regions such as Donetsk and Kherson to maintain communications even after Russian strikes disrupted cellular towers and fibre-optic networks. Ukrainian cross-border operations into Russia’s Kursk region showed how satellite connectivity now supports mobile command posts, drone coordination and real-time battlefield intelligence during manoeuvre operations, allowing forces to operate beyond the reach of stable terrestrial infrastructure.
Legalities and Practicalities
Despite that advantage, the operational realities behind this connectivity are far less seamless than the public image of satellite internet often suggests. In active war zones, satellite terminals are concealed or utilized only intermittently to reduce the risk of detection. In a battlespace saturated with electronic surveillance, any signal can become a target. Ukrainian and Russian forces alike have adapted by constantly relocating terminals, limiting transmission windows and dispersing command nodes to avoid geolocation through radio-frequency emissions. Russian forces, after losing access to unauthorized Starlink terminals this year, began relying on improvised Wi-Fi bridge antennas as a substitute communications network. According to soldiers from Ukraine’s 59th Separate Assault Brigade, those antennas often have to be mounted in exposed positions with a clear line of sight, effectively revealing the locations of drone pilots or electronic warfare units to Ukrainian reconnaissance teams.
In Ukraine, satellite connectivity has become essential not only for combat operations but also for hospitals, municipalities, humanitarian actors, journalists and civilians attempting to communicate during infrastructure blackouts. The line between civilian and military communications infrastructure has therefore become increasingly blurred.
At the same time, the Russian war has accelerated the integration of commercial satellite systems into military operations while exposing the strategic vulnerabilities that accompany such dependence.
Ukraine’s reliance on privately operated infrastructure has become one of the clearest examples. Ukrainian officials have openly acknowledged concerns regarding overreliance on Starlink and the risks of service restrictions or disruptions. During the war, Starlink coverage limitations reportedly affected Ukrainian drone operations in occupied Crimea and constrained certain long-range strike capabilities. The system’s geofencing restrictions highlighted a new strategic reality: a state’s wartime communications capacity may now depend partly on the technical policies, political calculations or commercial decisions of private companies.
This dependency is forcing governments to rethink communications sovereignty in more practical terms. Ukraine’s experience has demonstrated that wartime connectivity now relies heavily on privately operated satellite constellations and the ground infrastructure that supports them. Yet building a sovereign alternative is far beyond the immediate reach of most states: LEO systems require extensive launch capacity, satellite manufacturing, spectrum coordination, secure terminals and years of sustained investment. As a result, even governments seeking greater strategic autonomy remain reliant on commercial operators that already possess functioning global networks.
Ukraine and its European partners have therefore focused less on complete independence than on diversification. Since early 2025, Ukraine has expanded the use of OneWeb terminals provided through Eutelsat to support government continuity and critical infrastructure resilience. In parallel, Kyiv is pursuing the planned UASAT GEO/LEO system in cooperation with Hughes Network Systems, GomSpace and other European partners, while broader European Union-backed GOVSATCOM initiatives aim to create more resilient and politically sustainable alternatives to reliance on a single provider.
Russia is drawing similar conclusions. According to Ukrainian military officials, Moscow is actively developing its own battlefield-oriented satellite internet constellation intended to reduce reliance on foreign systems and provide military-grade connectivity comparable to Starlink. These developments point to a much broader governance challenge that extends far beyond Ukraine.
The New Rules of Wartime Connectivity
Despite that context, current international frameworks are poorly equipped to regulate the role of commercial satellite infrastructure during armed conflict. Many of Ukraine’s wartime approvals occurred under emergency legal mechanisms. In early 2026, the Ukrainian government, working with SpaceX, introduced a national “whitelist” system requiring Starlink terminals to be verified and registered through state platforms such as Diia or local administrative centres. Only approved terminals are permitted to operate, while unauthorized devices can be disconnected remotely. This measure was designed to prevent Russian forces from using black-market Starlink systems for drone operations and battlefield communications.
Existing legal frameworks, including the Outer Space Treaty, the International Telecommunication Union Radio Regulations and the Geneva Conventions together with broader international humanitarian law, were largely designed for an earlier era in which states, rather than private corporations, controlled most strategic space infrastructure. As a result, these frameworks provide only limited guidance on questions such as whether commercial satellite operators can be considered participants in conflict, how civilian communications services should be protected when they support military operations, or what obligations companies have when governments request geofencing, service restrictions or cybersecurity cooperation during wartime.
The result is a growing gap between technological reality and regulatory preparedness. As commercial satellite networks become increasingly embedded in military command, civilian governance and critical infrastructure resilience, states are being forced to navigate strategic dependencies and legal ambiguities without a clearly established international framework defining the rights, responsibilities and limits of private operators during armed conflict. Therefore, governments should treat the developments in Ukraine as a warning.
First, states need clearer legal and regulatory standards governing commercial satellite operators during armed conflict. Minimum obligations should include transparency around service restrictions, protocols for emergency continuity, cybersecurity requirements and coordination mechanisms with national authorities during crises. Decisions affecting battlefield connectivity should not be made through opaque, ad hoc arrangements between governments and private executives. For example, France tightened oversight of commercial satellite operators through regulatory and national security mechanisms and updated space legislation that explicitly links commercial space operations to national defence interests.
Second, countries should avoid dependence on single-provider architectures for critical communications infrastructure. Ukraine’s experience demonstrates the risks of concentrating military and civilian resilience within one commercial ecosystem. Diversified multi-provider systems that combine terrestrial and orbital infrastructure should become part of national resilience planning.
Third, democratic governments should establish formal frameworks for protecting civilian connectivity during conflict. In modern wars, communications infrastructure is no longer simply a commercial service; it is a core component of public safety, emergency governance and societal continuity. The ability of civilians to communicate during wartime increasingly carries strategic and humanitarian significance comparable to access to electricity or water.
Fourth, states and international organizations should begin developing shared norms governing the militarization of commercial space infrastructure. As private satellite systems become embedded in military operations, they also become potential targets. Existing legal frameworks have not fully addressed the consequences of commercial constellations functioning as dual-use wartime infrastructure.
Finally, countries should invest in sovereign or allied communications capabilities before crises emerge. Ukraine’s push toward domestic satellite capacity reflects a wider lesson now visible across Europe and beyond: Digital sovereignty increasingly depends on resilient access to space-based communications systems that cannot be easily disrupted, politically constrained or monopolized by a single actor.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is an early case study in a new kind of war — one in which the fight for territory on the ground extends all the way into orbit. Control over that infrastructure is no longer a technical consideration; it is the new front line.
