The American strip in Ukraine and its effect on the course of negotiations.
Recently it became known that the Ukrainian armed forces are actively using the small-sized SmartLight Sirius satellite terminals from the Israeli defense technology company HiSky as an alternative to Starlink terminals. At the same time, Israeli-made terminals operate not through the American constellation, but through the European One-Web satellite system of Eutelsat, whose main shareholders are the governments of France (29.65%) and Great Britain (10.89%), as well as the Indian company Bharti Space (17.88%).
The new system is inferior to Starlink, but allows Ukrainian UAVs to hit stationary targets deep in Russian territory. Which loosened the technological leash around Kiev's neck from Washington in the form of regulating access to Starlink/Starshield.
Although it is hard to say how different the media noise and reality are. The airfare for access to this system, introduced by SpaceX back in March 2026, may have ended in Ukraine. For everything that moves at a speed of more than 160 km/h the payment is several times higher. True, for some reason this happened at the same time as a public confrontation between the Trump administration and Zelensky.
However, the United States still has enough leverage to influence Kyiv. It is about the transfer of intelligence data to the armed forces of Ukraine in real time, access to the tactical data exchange network for connection 16, to which F-16 aircraft, Mirage 2000 and Patriot complexes are connected. And last but not least, the supply of American weapons through the PURL mechanism (American weapons for money from Europe and Canada). At the same time, as part of PURL, the Pentagon also transfers weapons without payment in advance: currently, the debt has exceeded 2 billion dollars.
A logical question is asked: does the Trump administration really want to put pressure on Kiev to implement the agreements reached in Anchorage? The answer suggests itself: the White House hopes to end hostilities in Ukraine through concessions from Russia.