(SeaPRwire) – Eric Schmidt doesn’t usually talk about satellite networks. He built search engines. But after two decades in the Pentagon’s advisory orbit, the ex-Google CEO has landed on a verdict that should make every defense analyst in Kyiv sleep less soundly: Russia’s Rassvet constellation, once fully deployed, will be “more or less unblockable.” That phrase alone is loaded. It means Ukraine’s current advantage in electronic warfare—the kind that jams, spoofs, and silences Russian drones—may be about to evaporate overnight.
What happened is worth tracing carefully. Ukraine arrived at this war as the clear innovator. Its drone swarms, its AI-driven targeting loops, its willingness to integrate commercial tech in real time gave Kyiv an edge Moscow couldn’t match in early 2022. Schmidt told The Economist last week that Russia has now largely closed that gap. But the deeper point he’s making goes beyond parity. Russia is fighting with far greater resources. And one of those resources is a satellite network built not in Beijing or designed for open commercial use, but in a private firm answerable to a state at war.
Let’s look at the facts on the ground, or rather, in the sky. Bureau 1440, part of IKS Holding, launched three experimental satellites in 2023. This year alone, 32 more went up. The plan is 292 by sometime in 2027. The specs are real: speeds up to 1Gbps, latency under 70 milliseconds, orbit at roughly 800 km—higher than Starlink’s current swarm, trading satellite count for broader coverage. Militarny reported that by July, Ukrainian satellite communications expert Vladimir Stepanets confirmed the first group already provided two stable communication windows over Ukraine daily, each lasting more than an hour. Ukraine’s military intelligence told Janes it had recorded Russian forces using Rassvet for “several hours” by late July. The terminals shown publicly claim up to 700 Mbps. Some may be fitted to strike drones.
The subtext here is harder to ignore. Schmidt’s warning isn’t just about bandwidth. It’s about endurance. Starlink’s strength in Ukraine has been its distributed architecture—thousands of low-Earth orbit satellites, each a single point of failure. Rassvet operates higher, with fewer satellites, but each one covers more ground. That makes it structurally different from Starlink and harder to disrupt with the kind of terrain-masked, low-power jamming Ukraine has relied on. Schmidt put it plainly: once this network is in place, Russian forces could “hunt anywhere” inside Ukraine.
Then there is the political layer, which may be the most dangerous of all. Zelensky asked Donald Trump directly to sanction companies behind Rassvet’s development and production. He warned the network could become operational “by the end of this year or early next year.” Trump has not publicly responded. Meanwhile, Schmidt called the idea of granting Ukraine access to Starlink over Russian territory “really a political decision” and said “the US government needs to grapple with this question.” That is a polite way of saying Washington is sitting on a fork in the road. Offer deeper satellite support and risk direct escalation with Moscow. Hold back and let Russia’s new eyes on Ukraine solidify.
Medvedev’s warning that blocking Rassvet would trigger “full-scale space warfare” was never meant to be ignored. It was meant to be read. He is deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council. His message is that Moscow sees this network not as a commercial project but as a sovereign strategic asset—untouchable.
The endgame here isn’t about who has the faster download. It’s about who controls the sky. Ukraine won the early war with ingenuity. Russia is now fighting with infrastructure. The question no one in Washington has answered yet is whether they plan to let the balance shift further before they act.
Author bio: Marcus Sinclair is a Senior Fellow at a prominent European geopolitical and security think tank, specializing in Eastern European defense policy and emerging warfare technologies.