This follows Awaaz Punjab's earlier report on President Vladimir Putin praising Elon Musk as Russia's Rassvet network was rolled out. Kyiv now says the network has moved from rollout to military use over Ukraine. Read the earlier Rassvet report

Russia is already using its new Rassvet satellite network, billed as a homegrown version of Starlink, for military communications over Ukraine, Ukrainian military intelligence told Reuters on Friday.

Source: Reuters (Kyiv, Daniel Flynn)

"Russia is using the 'Rassvet' satellite system over the territory of Ukraine for military purposes," Andrii Yusov, spokesman for the Main Intelligence Directorate of Ukraine's Ministry of Defense (GUR), said in a written statement to Reuters. These are Ukrainian intelligence claims; Russia's defence ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment, Reuters reported.

The GUR said Russia has launched 32 Rassvet satellites into orbit so far this year in two batches, in March and July, and that Moscow plans further launches by the end of 2026 to expand the network's geographic coverage toward a full low-orbit communications system.

Yusov said the constellation is currently insufficient to provide uninterrupted coverage of Ukrainian territory: communication is available intermittently when the satellites pass over the relevant areas. The GUR said Rassvet could provide two-way data exchange with Russian unmanned aircraft over Ukraine, aiming to make strike drones more accurate and harder to jam — again, Kyiv's assessment of the system's purpose, not an independently verified capability.

The GUR has published a list of 49 companies from Russia and Belarus that it says are involved in the project. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy last week imposed sanctions on 10 companies involved in developing Rassvet, including Bureau 1440, which coordinates the state-backed project and has said it plans a constellation of more than 900 satellites by 2035.

In Moscow the same day, experts on Russia's Security Council said Russia needs to urgently expand the system, warning that Western satellite services such as Starlink, developed by Musk's SpaceX, and OneWeb could be used to destabilise society and politics in unspecified countries, Reuters reported from Moscow.

Source: Reuters (Moscow, Andrew Osborn)

"To boost the development of the (Rassvet) system, it is necessary to rapidly scale up the mass production of communications satellites and terminal equipment," the Security Council said in a statement, according to state media. The warning followed a meeting of the presidium of its Scientific and Expert Council on information security and internet access, and state agencies were told to draw up proposals for full-scale deployment, Reuters reported. Separately, Dmitry Medvedev, deputy chairman of the Security Council, criticised Musk for letting the Ukrainian military use his satellites.

Digital Development Minister Maksut Shadayev told Putin last month that Russia has so far launched just over 30 Rassvet satellites — a tiny fraction of Starlink's more than 10,000. Starlink's military version, Starshield, operates in Ukraine but not in Russia, and Russian forces had been using grey-market Starlink terminals in Ukraine until Kyiv successfully lobbied SpaceX to disable them earlier this year, Reuters reported.