Does Ukraine still trust the U.S.?

SPEAKER_1 (0:00)

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Erin Covey (0:16)

WBUR Podcasts, Boston.

Dmytro Veselov (0:21)

Starlink limitation was not super critical, but the psychological damage is great. So that's a huge blow to trust in the military technology from the US overall.

Kalyani Saxena (0:32)

Ukraine's relationship with the US is increasingly strained. What happens next on the ground?

It's Thursday, October 15th, and this is Here & Now Anytime, from NPR and WBUR Boston. I'm Kalyani Saxena. Today on the show, we'll ask, is it really possible to reform fraternity culture?

Nicholas L. Syrett (1:05)

Fraternities often emphasize sexual success with women. They boast about it. They've been doing this since the 1920s.

Kalyani Saxena (1:13)

And we'll get a big-picture overview of the race to control the House. Just under three weeks left until election day.

Erin Covey (1:20)

By all indications, this looks like a blue wave election. Currently, Republicans are defending the bulk of the seats that we have rated competitive. So they're playing quite a bit more defense.

Kalyani Saxena (1:35)

But first, Ukraine is resuming its strikes on Russian oil refineries. The move comes after Ukraine's president Vladimir Zelensky accused the US of betraying Kyiv. Quick pause here for context. This week, Ukraine said it had paused its strikes on Russia for three days after President Trump announced an energy ceasefire between the countries. But Ukraine says that Russia kept attacking and that Kyiv did not get its regular heads up from US intelligence before the strikes. Making matters even more strained, Ukraine also experienced disruptions with the Starlink satellite service that it uses for battlefield communications. That service is provided to Ukraine by the US and Starlink is owned by Elon Musk. Dmytro Veselov is a member of the Ukrainian military involved in drone targeting against Russia.

He says the disruption in Starlink satellite service yesterday caused, quote, irreversible damage and trust in the US.

And he spoke with Scott Tong.

Scott Tong (2:41)

Can you talk about, I understand you're in Kyiv, how it's been the last couple nights. President Zelensky has said Ukraine did not get its normal intelligence warnings before Russian strikes.

Dmytro Veselov (2:53)

Yeah, that thing's happened. Usually we used to get advance warning if there is something up on Russian launch sites and there is a threat of missiles flying in Kyiv. And a few nights in a row, we had Russian missiles flying into Kyiv without, like with air raid sirens going afterwards.

Scott Tong (3:14)

I understand in addition to that, Ukraine's access to the full-speed satellite service Starlink was throttled, slowed down earlier this week. Did you experience that?

Dmytro Veselov (3:26)

Yes. Two days ago, the first messages started to appear that like a few of drones have dropped like mid-flight, lost communication, that were carrying the Starshield communications.

Then by trial and error, our unit started to probe what's going on. Then they figured out that apparently, the Starshield now has a limitation of 170 kilometers per hour, and it shuts off if you go any faster than that. If there's a speed limit on those drones, then they are easier targets for Russian interceptor drones.

Scott Tong (4:05)

Do you have any idea who is responsible for this Starshield, the high-speed Starlink problem? Who slowed it down?

Dmytro Veselov (4:13)

I don't have anything other than public information, and the public information is US DoD pointing finger at the SpaceX, and SpaceX pointing finger at the DoD.

Scott Tong (4:25)

Let me ask right now about drone warfare. What is the threat right now of the Russian drones? I understand many of them are getting much faster in the air?

Yeah.

Dmytro Veselov (4:36)

Russians have moved from their turboprop drones to the jet-propelled drones. They're a lot faster, and we need to scale up of our production of interceptors that can catch up with these jet-propelled drones. Also, Russians have scaled up their AI, auto-targeting AI from smaller tactical-level drones to these bigger deep-strike drones.

They have now fully autonomous, like zero people in the kill chain strike capability, which they use.

Scott Tong (5:13)

Fully autonomous? Yes. Yeah. Wow.

Is the Ukrainian drone technology ahead, or is the Russian technology ahead?

Dmytro Veselov (5:24)

I'd say Russian technology is ahead, because Russians are not limited by collateral damage. They blow up civilian targets every day, and nobody will cut their funding for it. We are still dependent on the Western funding and need to not upset our Western partners.

If we will say that we are designing full autonomous kill bots to at least catch up with the Russians, then our Western partners will be upset and will cut our funding. So we can do that.