Ukraine has held its first international course in military surgery and resuscitation, under instructors from the American College of Surgeons and other Western trauma bodies, the Defense Ministry says. “Tryzub”, or Trident, has been conducted for front-line surgeons and anesthesiologists.

The week-long drills put 16 doctors, eight surgeons, and eight anesthesiologists through three standard Western trauma programs: Advanced Trauma Life Support, Definitive Surgical Trauma Care, and Advanced Surgical Skills for Exposure in Trauma. All of them work at stabilization points close to the fighting.

The course has been run with the International Association for Trauma Surgery and Intensive Care and the Global Medical Knowledge Alliance, a non-profit that helps rebuild Ukraine’s healthcare, with support from Razom4Ukraine and Expertise France.

The wounds have changed

The course answers a battlefield that has grown deadlier. Ukrainian combat medics say modern combat trauma has fundamentally changed: drones and shrapnel now cause most of the complex wounds, often tearing through several parts of the body at once.

Bleeding has become the main cause of death on the battlefield, and the window to stop it is measured in minutes. That is the gap a well-drilled surgical team near the line is meant to close.

“People who will do everything to save his life”

Defense Minister Yevhenii Khmara has framed the course as a promise to troops at the front.

“When a soldier goes into battle, he must know that if he is wounded, there will be people beside him who will do everything they can to save his life,” Khmara says.

Experience, he added, is a kind of trust that matters enormously at the front.

“That is why we want our medics to have the best knowledge and skills, and to be able to act as one team," he states.

Ukrainian front-line medicine already draws international notice: one Azov brigade medic was named Europe’s best military medic of the year, and off-duty Ukrainian medics recently saved a man’s life at a London crash scene.

Ukraine's military satellite links work at full speed again after a cap that hobbled its drones, Ukraine's Defense Ministry said on 24 October. Hours later, SpaceX owner Elon Musk, who earlier pointed at Washington, said his company had enforced its own rules. A Ukrainian presidential adviser and a drone volunteer replied that civilian Starlink could not fly such missions.

Ukraine holds off Russia with American tools it doesn't control, so any pause decided abroad, like stalled Patriot deliveries or the Starlink cap, opens gaps in its defense. With no stated rule on what Ukraine's forces may do, the next cutoff could again come unannounced and unexplained.

Kyiv records full speed again

The ministry recorded stable connections above 400 km/h (250 mph). Before, Kyiv said, links on Starlink and its military version, Starshield, cut out above 161 km/h (100 mph).

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the restoration began overnight. "The speeds are now where they need to be," he said, citing defense against jet-powered Shahed drones. He thanked US lawmakers, the media, the State Department, and the US President, but not Musk or SpaceX.

Musk: "That loophole was closed last week"

Musk replied "Correct" to an X user who called Starlink "not a weapons system." "Ukraine military violated Starlink terms of service and used it for offensive drone strikes to kill people. That loophole was closed last week," he wrote.

Correct.

Using Starlink, a civilian commercial service, for offensive drone strikes to kill people has never been allowed, nor should it be.

Starshield, a different system, is controlled by the US government. What they decide to do is up to them.

Ukraine military violated… https://t.co/ZXBB8bYfPn

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 24, 2026

He called Starshield "a different system" the US government controls, and warned: "Were Starlink to be turned off, the Ukrainian front line would collapse immediately. This is NOT a threat, it is simply a statement of fact."

Musk named no evidence, cases, or time frames. Overnight, he answered a headline on the US financial blog ZeroHedge saying he "admits" SpaceX throttled Starlink.

"We simply enforced our terms of service when they were bypassed. There has been no change to our terms of service," Musk wrote.

When the cap hit on 14 October, Musk wrote that the US government owns and controls Starshield and that the US military and "ultimately POTUS" decide any limits. US President Donald Trump, who credited Musk with the fix while Kyiv still saw the cap, said on 24 October he had spoken to Musk about Ukraine but gave no details.

Ukrainians note contradiction to reality

Ukrainian presidential adviser on defense technology Serhii Beskrestnov, known by the callsign Flash, wrote:

"It is very strange that Elon Musk doesn't know about the restrictions on Starlink operations in Ukraine."

Since winter 2026, every Starlink terminal over Ukraine, occupied areas included, has been limited to 70–90 km/h (43–56 mph), he said, and over Russia, Starlink does not work. "So we PHYSICALLY CANNOT USE COMMERCIAL STARLINK for deep strikes and mid-range strikes," Beskrestnov wrote. Deep strikes hit targets far inside Russia, mid-range ones targets closer to the front.

Ukrainian activist and drone fundraiser Serhii Sternenko called Musk's claim untrue. He said Ukraine introduced whitelists of terminals in February, and any terminal used on the move had to be listed and connected to Starshield.

"So using civilian Starlink for drone missions was technically impossible. All drone missions that needed satellite communication could be carried out only with Starshield," Sternenko added.

European governments help pay for Ukraine's Starlink service. Germany funds it under a contract that runs until April 2027. Polish Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski, whose country pays around $50 million a year for the service, said on 23 October: "Mixing business with politics usually ends badly, especially when we talk about Elon Musk."

Ukraine's defense minister raised the urgent need for Patriot interceptors with Sweden on 22 October, the Defense Ministry reported. The same day, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy warned of more Russian ballistic strikes and blamed US supply cuts.

Patriots are Ukraine's main defense against Russian ballistic missiles, and their deliveries keep shrinking. Figures Zelenskyy released in August showed Patriot interceptor deliveries falling from 675 in 2023 to 364 in 2025, with 264 projected for 2026. Europe holds enough PAC-2 and PAC-3 interceptors for Ukraine's minimum winter needs, Zelenskyy told journalists on 16 October, but he did not yet know how many Europe would hand over, Ukrainska Pravda reported.

Partners' stocks now, Ukraine's missiles later

Russia fired 21 ballistic missiles at Kyiv overnight on 22 October, Zelenskyy said. Defense Minister Yevhenii Khmara told his Swedish counterpart, Pål Jonson, that Ukraine must counter ballistic threats as fast as possible, in particular with Patriot interceptors.

The ministry's readout says Ukraine has Patriot missiles under contract. It also says Kyiv asks partners to transfer interceptors from their stocks in exchange for future deliveries allocated to Ukraine.

Khmara made the same request at the Ukraine Defense Contact Group meeting on 8 September. He said then that Ukraine was contracting about 1,000 Patriot missiles with partners' help and an EU loan, but they would arrive only in the coming years, LB reported. He asked allies for missiles from their stocks now, in exchange for future upgraded missiles under Ukraine's contracts.

"Only when the American side approves it"

Zelenskyy spoke to journalists before meeting Finnish Prime Minister Petteri Orpo, Ukrinform reported. He said the Americans had reduced supplies and Russia would step up ballistic attacks.

"Europeans can provide the missiles only when the American side approves it," Zelenskyy said.

He said the US had sent most of its interceptors to the Middle East.

On 19 October, Zelenskyy told US senators that US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth was not signing off on Patriot deliveries allies had already paid for. Axios obtained the call transcript from Ukrainian officials. A US government official told the Kyiv Independent that Ukrainian officials' claims that Hegseth was holding up the missiles were "not true."

Washington says nothing has changed. "We have our own needs, too," Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on 20 October, but there is "nothing being deliberately denied to Ukraine." Hegseth told reporters in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, that the US had not changed its posture toward Ukraine, "but certainly with things like interceptors, we want to make sure our guys have the most possible as well."

Ukraine has just become the first country with which NATO’s weapons-buying agency has ever established a dedicated partnership. Under a new agreement, Kyiv has gained the right to purchase weapons through the NATO Support and Procurement Agency (NSPA), and Ukrainian firms can bid on its tenders, the Defense Ministry reports.

The deal, approved by the Ukrainian government in August and signed last week, is called the Security Cooperation Support Partnership. Through it, Ukraine can tap the agency’s 45 procurement partnerships, which cover the purchase, maintenance, and lifecycle support of weapons systems.

A single window into NATO’s arms market

For Ukraine’s military, the partnership is meant to make buying faster and cheaper. Orders can run through existing NSPA contracts or through new tenders, including an emergency-procurement track, and pooling Ukraine’s needs with those of other countries is designed to sharpen prices.

The purchases can be paid for from Ukraine’s state budget, by international partners, or through joint financing.

“Ukraine is the first and only country, and a non-member of NATO at that, for which a separate partnership was created as a single entry point to the agency’s work, and Ukrainian industry was given broad access to the agency’s tenders,” said Deputy Defense Minister Mstyslav Banik.

And a way in for Ukraine’s arms makers

The agreement cuts both ways, too. Ukrainian defense companies can now register in the agency’s supplier database, submit proposals, compete in tenders on equal footing with foreign firms, and sign contracts with NSPA under a mechanism that runs for five years from April 2025.

“We want our partners to gain access to this experience and these technologies, and Ukrainian producers to gain new opportunities for cooperation,” said Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Hvozdiar.

This is a partnership that benefits both sides, the Ukrainian official added.

The signing was announced on 14 October at an NSPA industry event in Kyiv that drew about 150 Ukrainian defense manufacturers.

The front changes faster than any headquarters, so Ukraine’s war chief went to the people who fight on it. On 16 October, Ukrainian Defense Minister Yevhenii Khmara met commanders and soldiers from front-line units to discuss the needs of the front, command practices that save lives, and ways to raise combat effectiveness, the Defense Ministry reported.

The front keeps changing, with technology, tactics and weapons shifting constantly, so decisions made far from it risk arriving late and costing lives. Khmara’s answer is to anchor ministry policy in the experience of the soldiers who fight, a continuation of the “machines over men” program.

"The front does not stand still. But the key thing is people. People will always be the foundation and the main value of the Defense Forces,” Khmara said.

He claimed that the decisions of the Ministry of Defense must take into account the experience of warriors, those who directly carry out combat missions at the front.

Ukraine's most battle-hardened brigades say their word

The meeting drew commanders from across the force, including the Airborne Assault Forces, the Marine Corps, the 93rd, 100th, 28th and 155th mechanized brigades, the 1st, 425th and 475th assault regiments, the 3rd and 59th assault brigades, and Azov.

The last one, the 1st Azov Corps of the National Guard of Ukraine, is actively fighting in the Donbas region, where units have led counter-operations to disrupt Russian advances toward fortress cities that have been holding Russia's operation since 2014.

Meanwhile, the 93rd "Kholodnyi Yar" Separate Mechanized Brigade took part in fierce battles for Ilovaisk, the Donetsk Airport, Debaltseve, and Bakhmut, as well as in the liberation of the Kharkiv Oblast. Both units are known for their extensive implementation of advanced military technologies, including ground robotic complexes, FPV strike drones, and innovative anti-drone electronic warfare systems.

Command tricks that keep soldiers alive

The talk turned on how good commanders cut their own losses. Participants discussed command approaches that help save soldiers’ lives, use resources efficiently, and achieve combat results.

The ministry wants those methods studied and spread to other units, treating commanders' hard-won judgment as something to scale rather than leave in one brigade.

One goal: fewer Ukrainian losses, more Russian ones

Khmara framed the task in plain terms.

“We must adapt faster and give our warriors modern and effective tools,” he stressed, calling it the shared job of the Defense Ministry, the commander-in-chief and the General Staff.