Ukraine – CIA More Aggressive – Starlink And Refinery Strikes – Higher Casualties On Ukr’s Side
moon of alabama
Three items on Ukraine.
The CIA in Ukraine:
The Atlantic has a look at the current CIA role in the war in Ukraine.
In 2014, immediately after the elected government of Ukraine had been removed by a militant putsch from the right, the CIA established more than a dozen outpost in Ukraine to agitate against and spy on Russia.
As the piece quoted below says in an aside: “The CIA helped build the modern Ukrainian intelligence apparatus after Russia annexed Crimea in 2014.” It trained a new generation of Ukrainian spies. The most famous of them is the current head of the president’s office General Kyrill Budanov.
The CIA’s role in the conflict has only strengthened since.
The Man in the Middle of Trump’s Deeply Conflicted Ukraine Policy (archived) – The Atlantic, Oct 23 2026
[A]ll the while [Trump was squabbling with Zelenski], the U.S. intelligence community has shown no letup in its fight to defend Ukraine against Russian aggression. Armed with information that the U.S. provides, Ukraine’s military has launched strikes deep inside Russia. And U.S. spy satellites provide early warning about incoming missiles and drones. Among U.S. personnel on the ground, “the CIA is in the lead,” a retired senior officer who travels frequently to Ukraine told me. If anything, the Ukrainians, with the CIA’s help, have gotten too good at hurting Russia for Trump’s taste.
The administration’s policy is deeply conflicted, and perhaps no one understands that better than John Ratcliffe, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency. He has a foot in two worlds: advising a president who’s continuously at odds with Ukraine’s leadership, and running an agency that’s essential to Ukraine’s war for survival. One intelligence officer in the Baltics, who works closely with the Americans to counter Russian influence, told me that, though you’d never know it from Trump’s rhetoric, the CIA’s operations are now “much more aggressive” than they were during the Biden administration.
No matter what Trump says about Ukraine, it is the CIA that is doing the ground work and running the real show. But, as the next point shows, that does not mean that the CIA is not following the president’s wishes.
Starlink and attacks on Russian refineries by Ukraine:
Last week I wrote about how a defiant Ukraine launched attacks on Russian oil infrastructure against the openly expressed will of the U.S. president. (Trump wants Russia to export oil and diesel to lower the prices in global markets.)
A day later Ukraine had sudden problems with directing its drones and missiles via the Starlink / Starshield satellite connections the U.S. supplies. There was a lot of public confusion about the issue.
Starshield is the special encrypted military version of the civilian Starlink internet access service. The Pentagon is providing Starshield to Ukraine.
Neither service can, to my best knowledge, currently be used for attacks within Russia. But Ukraine has been using those services for drone attacks on Russian forces within Ukraine.
Ukraine has used the civilian Starlink versions with its smaller antennas to direct fast flying drones against Russian targets within Ukraine. Starlink’s terms of services prohibit the use of its services at a vehicle speed of more than 100 miles/hour. (Higher vehicle speeds require more and faster satellite switching. An extra expensive Starlink service for airliners allows for higher vehicle speeds.) The speed limit though had not been enforced.
When the Ukrainians defied the president, Elon Musk’s Starlink suddenly limited the service to what its terms of services allowed for. The Ukrainian’s lost the connections to their fast flying drones.
Neither the U.S. president, nor the Pentagon, nor Elon Musk’s Starlink had done anything special to disconnect Ukraine. But they had sent a message.
Strana reports that, since the Starlink service reduction has started, Ukrainian attacks against Russian refineries have ceased (machine translation):
Ukraine has not struck Russian oil refineries for over a week. The last report of an attack on the Ryazan Oil Refinery was on the night of October 16.
Kyiv allegedly resumed such attacks on October 14 — the day Russia, after a lengthy pause, announced strikes on two of its oil refineries. That same day, Ukrainian military personnel began noticing a sharp drop in their Starlink speed.
Prior to this, US President Donald Trump stated that the United States was demanding that Ukraine refrain from targeting Russian refineries as part of the diesel deal between Washington and Moscow. Media outlets reported that these conditions were put forward to the Ukrainian delegation during negotiations in Miami on October 10.
For several days after that, no strikes on the refinery were carried out, despite Zelenskyy criticizing Trump’s demands. He then announced that Ukraine was resuming strikes on Russian oil refineries. However, as we can see, two days later, such strikes were suspended again.
Ukrainian officials now say that their Starlink problems have been solved. We will have to wait and see how that will influence Ukrainian attacks on Russian oil infrastructure. My guess is that there will not be any more of these.
War Casualties:
There have long been discussion about the casualties of the war on the side of Ukraine and Russia. How many were and are getting killed or wounded on each side?
My hunch, from the very beginning of the war, is that the Ukrainian side is losing way more people than the Russians do. Western propaganda claims the opposite. U.S. financed outlets, like Mediazona, proclaim to provide ‘neutral’ numbers. But these still seem way to high for the Russian side.
In February 2026 the National Defense University of Finland published a collection of studies on the war in Ukraine:
Russia’s War Against Ukraine – Russia’s Future Military Development – Pentti Forsström (ed.) (pdf)
One Alexander Grable wrote Chapter 12 of the report (pg 149ff): IRRETRIEVABLE LOSSES: ESTIMATING CASUALTIES ON THE RUSSO-UKRAINE WAR. (There is also a video presentation)
The analysis is well sourced and quite detailed.
Its conclusion:
The evidence presented demonstrates that Russian KIA/MIA are very probably less than heretofore estimated by most sources, and Ukrainian losses are very probably higher than heretofore estimated by most sources. Moreover, the evidence presented in this article very strongly suggests that Ukrainian losses in KIA/MIA are higher than Russian losses, both relatively and absolutely.
My analyses throughout the extend of the war conforms with that take.
posted by Satish Sharma at
03:55
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