Residents of Kyiv awoke on Monday to the sound of explosions from a Russian barrage of so-called kamikaze drones that struck apartment blocks across the city, setting some ablaze, in a harsh reminder to battle-hardened Ukrainians that after nearly eight months of war the Kremlin is not backing down.

Eighteen people were rescued from the rubble of one residential building, the Kyiv Independent reported, and the capital’s central Shevchenko district was among the areas hit, AP reported, with multiple apartment blocks damaged and a nonresidential building on fire, Kyiv’s mayor, Vitali Klitschko, said. 

In a post on the Telegram social media site, the head of the Ukrainian president’s office, Andrii Yermak, said the drones deployed were of the Iranian Shahed-136 make, which Moscow has been using in recent weeks to target urban centers and infrastructure, including power stations.

Part of Ukraine’s strategy in downing Russian drones hinges on reliable communications systems, and Elon Musk has announced that he will not, after all, be pulling the plug on his funding of the Starlink Internet service in Ukraine. While it is not clear if Starlink has helped diminish the threat posed by the Iranian-made drones specifically,  it has been critical to Ukrainian forces. 

Mr. Musk’s reversal came after reports that his SpaceX company wanted the Pentagon to pay even more than it already has to underwrite the sophisticated and pricey satellite-based communications service. True to his irascible reputation, though, the technology billionaire did not make the announcement with anything approaching conviction or glee. 

“The hell with it … even though Starlink is still losing money and other companies are getting billions of taxpayer money, we’ll just keep funding Ukraine government for free,” he tweeted Saturday.  Only the day prior, Mr. Musk said, also via Twitter, that SpaceX would not be able to donate more than the 20,000 Starlink satellite units it has already given Ukraine and complained that it is now costing SpaceX $20 million a month to support Ukraine’s communications needs.

Mr. Musk’s striking  equivocations on Starlink come after his recent proposal that Ukraine recognize Russian sovereignty over the Crimea peninsula and possibly make other territorial concessions as a means to winding down the war. Those suggestions swiftly cast Mr. Musk as something of a rogue diplomat, drawing sharp rebukes from officials in Kyiv. However, these same officials have been more measured when it comes to the back-and-forth over Starlink, acknowledging the technological edge that Mr. Musk’s company has given Ukraine’s military on the battlefield. 

Ukraine’s successful counterattacks in various spots around the country are a major factor in galvanizing its attempts not only to toss the Russians out on their ears but also to expel one in particular from his current perch at Moscow — namely, Vladimir Putin.  A top advisor to President Zelensky, Mykhailo Podolyak, told the banned Russian news site Meduza that beyond ejecting Russian forces from Ukrainian territory, Ukraine is now “extremely interested” in seeing Russia’s military defeat. 

That is because Moscow’s defeat, Mr. Podolyak said, “is the only thing that will allow us to truly end the war, gain the opportunity to brutally punish the war criminals through legal channels, and indirectly facilitate the launch of a scenario in which the Russian political system of Russia itself is transformed.”

While Mr. Putin has done his level best to become arguably the most reviled leader in the region since Stalin, Ukraine is increasingly flexing its muscle on the ground — including Russian ground. 

Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, last week finally averred that Ukraine was behind the attack on a strategic bridge that links the Russian-occupied Crimean peninsula to mainland Russia. As the Telegraph reported, it was Russian pranksters posing as a former American ambassador who elicited the admission, but it was not as much of a surprise as something else Mr. Kuleba said: “If you were to ask me who blows up things in Crimea or Belgorod, then … I’d tell you, yes, that was us.”

Unlike Crimea, Belgorod is a region that sits within Russia itself, just across the border from Ukraine’s northern Kharkiv region. Sporadic attacks on military targets and energy infrastructure in what is essentially a staging ground for Russian attacks in the Donbas have multiplied  in recent months. According to reports in the Telegraph and elsewhere, air raid sirens sound in Belgorod regularly, and the city’s missile defenses often must try to knock out incoming fire.

On Saturday, a pair of assailants opened fire at an army training ground in southwestern Belgorod, killing 11 new Russian conscripts. What set off the attack was not immediately clear, but the attackers, who were shot dead, were said by the Russian defense ministry to have come from a former Soviet republic. An adviser to President  Zelensky,  Oleksiy Arestovych, said that “Tajikistanis” were behind the attack. 

The mayhem on the ground points to a  clear pattern of something else emerging, and that is Russian territory itself being drawn into the war. As an increasingly emboldened Ukraine leads to a demonstrably angrier Kremlin, Europe can expect more sparks to fly — now, in both directions.