Four Russian drone-relay stations inside Belarus stopped transmitting on 22 June, five days before the deadline Volodymyr Zelenskyy had set Alexander Lukashenko to dismantle them. Relay stations are ground equipment that receives and retransmits control signals to long-range drones. No Ukrainian drone crossed the border, and Belarus confirmed nothing. Asked on 24 June whether the kit had been pulled apart or merely switched off, Zelenskyy said: "Whether it has been dismantled or not, I honestly don't know yet"1.
The stations had relayed Russian drones onto the Zhytomyr, Rivne and Volyn oblasts of northern Ukraine, and Zelenskyy's 20 June ultimatum was the first time Kyiv formally threatened to strike a third country's soil. That threat now sits unused. Analysts cited by the Kyiv Independent believe the relays were suppressed by electronic-warfare jamming, radio interference that breaks a drone's control link, or by a cyberattack, rather than physically destroyed, and could resurface within months2.
Chernihiv oblast in northern Ukraine has logged fewer Russian drone incursions since the shutdown, the only corroboration so far, and it is indirect. Kyiv named a deadline for a neighbour it cannot invade, and something on that soil went quiet on schedule. Zelenskyy has pointedly declined to call the result permanent.
