For more than three years, one piece of technology has quietly shaped the course of the war in Ukraine more than almost any weapon on the battlefield: Starlink. Elon Musk’s satellite internet network has kept Ukrainian troops connected, guided drones to their targets, and held together a decentralized command structure that has repeatedly outmaneuvered a much larger invading force.
Now Russia wants one of its own.
According to Major General Vadym Skibitskyi, deputy chief of Ukraine’s Defense Intelligence directorate, Moscow is building a domestic satellite constellation called Rassvet, and doing so considerably faster than Ukrainian intelligence had originally anticipated. Skibitskyi disclosed the program’s scale and timeline in an interview with RBC-Ukraine published Monday, part of a wide-ranging assessment of Russia’s evolving missile and drone strategy.
By his account, Russia had already placed 16 satellites into low Earth orbit as of March. The plan, he said, calls for a constellation of 292 satellites by 2027, expanding to 924 by 2035 — a build-out that, if realized on schedule, would give Moscow persistent, Starlink-like coverage over Ukraine and potentially far beyond it.
The stakes go well beyond connectivity for connectivity’s sake. Reliable, low-latency satellite links are what allow modern drones to be piloted in real time over long distances, let commanders share targeting data instantly across dispersed units, and keep strike operations running even when terrestrial networks are jammed or destroyed. It’s a capability gap that has, until now, favored Ukraine.
“For now, the system can operate only intermittently, when a satellite passes over our territory,” Skibitskyi said, adding that full Starlink-like performance would only arrive once Moscow completes a denser satellite network. In other words: Rassvet today is a proof of concept, not yet an operational rival. But the trajectory — both figuratively and literally — is what has caught the attention of Ukrainian military planners.
Skibitskyi said discussions are already underway within Ukraine’s defense and intelligence establishment on how to counter the system once it matures, though he offered no specifics on what that response might look like.
The timing is notable. Skibitskyi’s remarks came in the same interview in which he detailed a broader modernization of Russia’s strike capabilities — including a shift toward turbojet-powered Geran-4 and Geran-5 attack drones, which he said now account for as much as half of the drones used in some recent strikes, and the introduction of mesh networking to allow real-time control of drone swarms. Both developments would benefit directly from the kind of resilient satellite backbone Rassvet is designed to provide, suggesting Moscow is trying to close a strategic gap across its entire strike architecture, not just in orbit.
Independent verification of the specific satellite figures cited by Ukrainian intelligence was not immediately available, and Russia’s Defense Ministry has not publicly commented on the program.
If Moscow succeeds in fielding a functioning Starlink equivalent at scale, the implications would extend beyond the current battlefield. A sovereign satellite network would reduce Russia’s reliance on jammable or geographically limited communications infrastructure, complicate Ukrainian and Western efforts to degrade Russian drone operations through electronic warfare, and hand the Kremlin a strategic asset with applications well outside Ukraine.
