Zelenskyy says he asked Trump, more than once, to sanction the Rassvet network

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has asked President Donald Trump several times to sanction the Russian and Chinese companies building a satellite network called Rassvet, he told the Financial Times in remarks published on Saturday. He said he raised it at their meeting in New York last month, on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly, and that he had asked before that. Trump's answer is not in the account.

Zelenskyy said China is working with Russia on the technology, and that Rassvet could be operational by the end of this year or the beginning of next. The trigger he gave for the Russian push is practical. Elon Musk earlier this year blocked Russian forces from using SpaceX's Starlink to guide drones striking Ukraine. A Kremlin network, if it works, would replace a link Moscow no longer has.

He also set out a second request that travels with the sanctions ask. Ukraine wants permission to use Starlink-equipped drones up to 200 kilometres inside Russia, against ballistic-missile launchers and drone launch sites. The Ukrainian military is currently limited to operating the system inside its own borders. The 200 kilometre line would cover launch areas set back from the frontier. It would not be a general licence for strikes anywhere in Russia.

What a working Rassvet would change

Starlink's value in this war has been guidance and control for drones that cannot rely on a ground radio once they fly past the horizon. A ban on Russian terminals removed that option for units that had been buying or capturing dishes. Rassvet, as Zelenskyy described it, is the replacement: a constellation Moscow can task without asking SpaceX. He told the FT that the same network could strengthen sabotage against Ukraine's European allies, because a drone over another country could be piloted from Moscow.

That second claim is a warning, not a demonstrated flight. No public test of Rassvet over a NATO state has been reported. The nearer claim is the calendar. End of this year or early next year is soon enough that a sanctions list drawn up after the new year would miss the first operational window Zelenskyy is describing. A list drawn up from the New York meeting would have had September and October to bite before that window. Saturday's interview is the public record that the request was made, and that it had been made more than once by the time of the General Assembly.

The companies are unnamed in the reports of the interview. Zelenskyy spoke of Russian and Chinese firms involved in the network. A sanctions order needs legal names, registration numbers and a finding. The FT account does not supply them. Kyiv's job, if it wants the order Trump has not given, is to hand over that annex. The interview does not say whether an annex was passed in New York.

The 200 kilometre ask

The Starlink restriction and the Rassvet request are linked in Zelenskyy's telling, and they pull in opposite directions. He wants Russian access to a Western constellation kept shut, and Ukrainian access to the same constellation widened by 200 kilometres across the border. Musk's earlier block on Russian military use is the fact both requests rely on. Widening Ukrainian use is a SpaceX and US government decision, not a Ukrainian one. The current rule, as he stated it, stops at the national border.

Saturday's story is therefore two unanswered asks. One is a sanctions list on unnamed firms behind a network that Kyiv says could be up within months. The other is a 200 kilometre operating box for Ukrainian Starlink drones against launchers. Neither has been granted in the account Zelenskyy gave the Financial Times. The date he can point to is the New York meeting last month, and the phrase he used was that he had asked several times.