Phoenix 24
Momentum is built as much as territory.
Zaporizhzhia, February 2026
What looks like a local push on the map is increasingly a systems contest, fought through connectivity, targeting cycles, and the ability to coordinate under pressure. Ukrainian units have accelerated counterattacks in the southeast, undoing weeks of Russian gains and retaking multiple small settlements in the Ukraine. The most notable advance has been registered roughly 80 kilometres east of Zaporizhzhia, a sector where Russian forces had been incrementally improving positions since the summer of 2025. The renewed tempo is being framed not only as battlefield progress, but as political leverage ahead of diplomatic engagements where land, security guarantees, and timelines collide.
The reporting around these advances highlights a blunt reality of modern warfare: when an army’s command and control is disrupted, even small tactical moves can cascade into wider reversals. Open source tracking by the Institute for the Study of War describes a consolidation of Ukrainian pressure across several fronts, including the Kharkiv area and key eastern axes around Kostiantynivka, Pokrovsk and Novopavlivka. Ukrainian forces reportedly began slowing Russian advances about a week earlier, and in several areas largely halted them before shifting into recovery operations. That sequencing matters because it suggests a deliberate effort to break Russian momentum first, then exploit hesitation rather than trade ground in a continuous grind.
The central accelerant in this cycle is not a new weapon system, but the tightening of access to a communications backbone. Ukrainian officials have argued that Russian operators were using Starlink terminals to control attack drones and to keep units synchronized in ways that bypassed jamming of GPS and radio signals. From early February, Ukraine’s defence authorities and SpaceX moved to block Russian forces’ unauthorised use of Starlink, a change that Russian aligned battlefield accounts later described as a shock to communications and command routines. The claim is not that connectivity alone wins battles, but that connectivity compresses time, and losing it forces an army into slower, less coherent decision making.
That interplay between drones, data links, and battlefield tempo is reshaping how offensives are paced. Ukrainian officials have said they collected evidence of “hundreds” of attacks by Starlink equipped drones, implying a scale large enough to influence operational planning. At the same time, SpaceX has repeatedly stated it does not sell or ship Starlink to Russia and does not do business with the Russian government or its military, which is why the focus is on unauthorised use and enforcement rather than formal supply. Ukraine also initiated verification of terminals inside the country, a step designed to reduce leakage, identify irregular registrations, and prevent the grey market from becoming a second logistics channel for Russian units. In this environment, denial of service becomes a battlefield tool, and administration becomes a form of defence.
The reporting also describes a Ukrainian cyber operation that blends deception with targeting. According to accounts linked to Ukrainian cyber forces, operators posed as a Russian linked activation service offering to help restore terminals that were disconnected under new registration rules. Russian soldiers were reportedly instructed to submit identifying details and coordinates for their terminals under the assumption that devices would be reactivated through administrative channels, creating a pipeline of intelligence about where hardware was located and who was using it. The group later claimed it collected 2,420 data packets related to Russian used terminals and passed them to Ukrainian law enforcement and defence agencies. The stated end state was “brick mode,” disabling devices, which turns an adversary’s need for connectivity into a self reported map of vulnerabilities.
Money and recruitment also surface in these accounts, because wars rarely stay inside purely military boundaries. Ukrainian cyber forces claimed they received 5,000 euros from Russian soldiers seeking to restore connectivity and that the funds were donated to Ukrainian drone fundraising efforts, a detail that reads as symbolic but also signals how improvised the contest has become. The same reporting says the operation helped identify 31 Ukrainian “traitors” allegedly willing to assist Russian forces by registering terminals, with information forwarded to the Security Service of Ukraine. Whether every number stands as a final audited fact is less important than the structural direction: both sides are treating digital logistics as a front line, and internal compliance as a security issue. In such conditions, the boundary between cyber operations, counterintelligence, and front line tactics collapses into a single workflow.
There is also a forward looking layer to these developments that remains grounded in near term military logic, not speculative forecasting. Ukrainian officials have said Russia is preparing for a summer 2026 offensive along the Slovyansk and Kramatorsk axis or toward the Orikhiv to Zaporizhzhia direction, possibly both, but is struggling to seize the necessary starting positions on its intended timeline. This is the kind of statement that functions as warning and messaging at once, because it shapes expectations for allies and signals to Moscow that preparation is being monitored. It also helps explain why Ukraine would push counterattacks now, because taking away launch pads and forcing Russia to reset can be strategically valuable even if the recovered settlements are small. The most consequential gains in a long war are often the ones that change the opponent’s calendar.
The wider strategic picture is that battlefield momentum is being presented as negotiation capital rather than as victory theatre. Talks involving Ukraine and Russia, hosted in Geneva and pushed by external mediators, are reportedly focusing heavily on land, while Ukraine continues to insist on conditions that make any settlement enforceable rather than temporary. That is where the United States enters the frame, not only through analysis from American based institutes, but through political pressure and the material reality that much of the coalition’s support still runs through Washington. The war’s legal backdrop remains anchored in the United Nations system, which frames self defence and territorial integrity as principles even when enforcement is contested. For Europe, the conflict continues to function as a stress test of readiness, industrial capacity, and political unity, and a reminder that modern deterrence is built on networks as much as on tanks.
Hechos que no se doblan. / Facts that do not bend.