Elon Musk accused Ukraine of violating the terms of Starlink’s use in a post on X on Saturday.

Ukraine said that the Starlink satellite system and its military version Starshield were now fully functional after over a week of restrictions that disrupted military operations and intensified tensions with the US. But hours later, Mr Musk, ⁠who owns the systems, accused the Ukrainian military of violating Starlink’s terms.

“Ukraine military violated Starlink terms of service and used it for offensive drone strikes to kill people. That loophole was closed last week”, he said on X. There were no immediate public comment from Ukrainian ⁠officials.

Almost a fortnight on from the first signs that something was amiss with Ukraine’s access to the Starlink satellite network, the fog of war remains around what happened, why, and, more importantly, how it has altered the outcome of the conflict.

Donald Trump’s account of events remains vague – but he did say that Elon Musk, whose SpaceX company owns the 10,000-plus satellites and their systems, had “put it back”. “It”, presumably, being the hitherto secure and reliable connections to both Starlink and its military variant, Starshield, both of which are heavily relied upon by the Ukrainian military.

New figures released by the UN this week show the number of Ukrainian civilian casualties in September rose by 85 per cent compared with the year before.

First-person drones, long-range glide bombs, ballistic rockets and new jet-powered Shahed cruise missiles are being used in the attacks as winter closes in. No one is off limits. Children, babies, mothers in the park, elderly fruit vendors.

A Russian drone attack on Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk region has killed three people and injured at least eight others, including a 11-year-old girl, the governor said. The attack ‌caused a ⁠fire on the fourth floor of an apartment block and ‌damaged a ​shop ‌and ⁠cars ⁠nearby.

Chancellor Friedrich Merz called for unity in his struggling coalition on Saturday, saying Germany faced growing threats from political extremists and what he described as daily Russian efforts to destabilise the country.

Speaking at a conference of the Christian Social Union (CSU), the Bavarian sister party of his conservative Christian Democrats (CDU), Merz said Germany faced “extraordinarily serious challenges”.

“How do we safeguard our freedom and our security in Europe, in the face of growing threats from extremists within and foreign powers from without?” he said, adding that Russia was seeking “to destabilise Germany on a `daily basis”.

Relations between Berlin and Moscow have fallen to their lowest level since the Cold War following Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine but Russia rejects accusations that ⁠it is conducting a hybrid campaign against Germany and other European countries.

An industrial zone in Russia’s Omsk came under attack from Ukrainian drones on Saturday, regional governor Vitaly Khotsenko said. Khotsenko ⁠did ‌not say whether any ‌facilities were ‌hit or provide an ⁠assessment of the damage.

The Omsk region in southwestern Siberia is ‌home ​to an ‌oil refinery ⁠operated by ⁠Gazprom Neft.

Ukrainian attacks cut power to parts of Crimea and Russian-controlled areas of eastern and southern Ukraine on Saturday, Russia’s energy ministry said.

The strikes hit energy infrastructure, ⁠affecting parts of Kherson, ​Zaporizhzhia, ⁠Donetsk and ‌Luhansk regions, it added.

The ministry did not say how many people had been affected in `those areas and the Crimean peninsula, which was annexed by Russia in 2014.

Staff were working to ‌restore services and ​temporary power cuts ‌had been ⁠made to ⁠keep the grid stable, ‌it ​added.

The slow abandonment of Kyiv by the world’s richest man and its most powerful will go down as one of the most shameful episodes in America’s post-war foreign policy: