Russian Troops Strap Starlink Terminals to Horses as Russian Cavalry Makes ‘Historic’ Return

Footage of a Starlink terminal attached to a horse reportedly filmed by Russian soldiers in Ukraine appeared on social media on Thursday.

Russian independent media outlet Astra posted the video to their Telegram channel. Apparently filmed on a shaky phone camera, it shows a horse wearing a saddle with two metal rods attached to it, on top of which is a Starlink terminal. Starlink is a satellite internet device developed by SpaceX, the company owned by US-based billionaire Elon Musk.

“Here we welded it, everything is cool, everything is fucking awesome,” the speaker says in Russian, pointing out how the terminal attaches to the saddle. “This is how the Starlink is pulled out. And it is inserted here. This is the design, it works.”

The video then cuts to what the speaker says is a live feed from the horse’s back broadcast with Starlink. Another video posted to Bluesky by Special Kherson Cat, an anonymous open-source intelligence account, goes into more detail – purporting to show a Russian soldier using the setup, with a camera attached to his chest and a power bank in his saddle bag.

Although SpaceX has repeatedly denied doing business in Russia, Moscow is able to bypass international sanctions and obtain Starlink terminals for its war effort in Ukraine by buying them from third countries, as per United24.

If genuine, horse-mounted Starlink units would allow Russian soldiers to stream footage of their surroundings back to command posts and headquarters in real time.

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The Russian ‘cavalry’

Reports of Russian troops in Ukraine using horses stretch back to at least 2023, when Russian media published an article about a unit from Bashkiria using them for military logistics.

More recently, however, as Russia’s supply of heavy armored vehicles dwindles, the practice appears to have become more widespread – sending the Kremlin’s propaganda machine into overdrive, as per Forbes.

As long ago as February 2025, Russia’s Lieutenant General Viktor Sobolev of the Duma Defence Committee said that the use of donkeys for transporting ammunition and other supplies to the front line had become “common practice.” 

“During the Great Patriotic War some of our artillery was horse-drawn. It reached Berlin,” he added, using the Kremlin’s term for the Second World War. 

“Dogs were used in the Great Patriotic War – two mines were loaded onto them, and they ran to where those mines were needed,” the high-ranking Russian officer continued. “It’s better to kill a donkey than two people in a car carrying cargo essential for the combat and survival of units and subunits on the front lines.”

In December 2025, the 92nd Separate Assault Brigade of Ukraine’s 5th Assault Battalion posted a video showing a drone strike on a group of Russian soldiers riding towards their position on horseback.

“Russian occupiers are losing equipment so quickly during their ‘meat assaults’ that they are forced to move on horseback. But even this does not help them – drone operators of the 5th Assault Battalion of the 92nd Separate Assault Brigade ‘neutralize’ the enemy as soon as they see a target,” they captioned the video.

In contrast, Russia’s state media portrays the Russian army’s increasing reliance on animals as a triumph of ingenuity rather than a sign of its waning resources. English-language outlet Russia Today (RT) published an article in the autumn of 2025 claiming that Russians would “soon witness the historic return of the Russian cavalry” to the frontlines of Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Another video shared widely on pro-Ukrainian social media channels (including by Special Kherson Cat on X) suggests that that day may already have arrived. 

The footage, if genuine, appears to show three Russian soldiers attacking a Ukrainian position on horseback before the arrival of a Ukrainian drone – which dives down to startle the horses into throwing their riders before targeting them, leaving the horses to gallop away unharmed.

Kyiv Post has not independently verified any of the videos mentioned in this article.