Oleg Ivashchenko, Head of the Main Intelligence Directorate (GUR) of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine, stated in an interview with The New York Times that some of the repeaters the Russian army uses to control drones on the territory of Belarus are functioning again. According to him, Kyiv has sufficient capabilities to "deal with" these objects. This was reported by RBC-Ukraine. The statement came against the backdrop of the fact that back in June, President Volodymyr Zelensky had publicly declared that the repeaters had been disconnected following an ultimatum, which makes the new intelligence assessment a notable revision of the picture.
Starlink Shortage and Russia's Tower Network
Ivashchenko explained the logic behind the deployment of the repeaters by noting that the Russian army still lacks a reliable alternative to SpaceX's Starlink terminals, which the Ukrainian Armed Forces use for secure communications and drone control on the battlefield. To compensate for this technological gap, he said, the adversary is building a network of towers and repeaters along the Ukrainian border. "They can use a network with many towers and repeaters. These repeaters are located along the border, and we have spotted six of them on the territory of Belarus," the head of the GUR said.
Zelensky's Ultimatum and Minsk's Reaction
The context of the statement is the June events. At that time, the President of Ukraine addressed Belarus's self-proclaimed president, Alexander Lukashenko, with a call to dismantle the repeaters, giving him a week to do so and emphasizing that in the absence of a response, Ukraine would destroy the objects itself. A few days later, Belarusian media reported that Russian drones had stopped flying along the Ukrainian-Belarusian border, and later Zelensky stated that the repeaters were no longer working. Now, according to Ivashchenko, "they stopped their deployment for a certain period, but now we see that some repeaters are working again."
Contradictory Data
Here, the versions of the parties and the official assessments do not add up. On the one hand, in June Zelensky publicly announced that the repeaters had been disconnected and the ultimatum fulfilled, while Belarusian media recorded the cessation of drone flights along the border. On the other hand, the Minister of Defense's advisor, Serhiy "Flash" Beskrestnov, had previously stated that the Russian occupiers were probably continuing to use the repeaters in Belarus for drone strikes on Ukraine, and now Ivashchenko reports the reactivation of some of the objects. Thus, between the statement "they were disconnected" and the assessment "working again / still working" there is a direct discrepancy, which has not been confirmed by independent external observation.
What This Means for Kyiv
Ivashchenko linked the reactivation of the repeaters to Zelensky's earlier warning to Belarus not to support attacks on the Ukrainian capital, otherwise Ukraine would deliver a retaliatory strike. The head of the GUR stated that Kyiv is now forced to consider whether to attack Belarusian territory, and emphasized: "We have sufficient capabilities to deal with this." Thus, the intelligence statement effectively shifts the question of the repeaters from the plane of a diplomatic ultimatum to the plane of possible forceful response, although independent verification of the fact of their operation is currently absent.
