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President Donald Trump indicated on Sunday that he planned to reach out to Elon Musk to discuss the possibility of providing Starlink Internet to the people of Iran.
Ukraine said it has worked with SpaceX to block Starlink internet terminals used by Russian forces, a move Kiev described as a major setback for Moscow’s battlefield operations.
Ukraine’s military uses tens of thousands of Starlink terminals for battlefield communications and drone operations, according to Reuters. Ukrainian officials said they recently discovered Starlink terminals connected to long-range Russian drones, prompting urgent calls to Elon MuskSpaceX for help.
Russian troops have relied on unauthorized Starlink terminals for secure communications since the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Ukrainian officials said.
But Kiev said it worked with SpaceX to compile a “whitelist” of authorized Ukrainian Starlink terminals, allowing Russian-operated systems to be shut down.
Russian soldiers with the Starlink boxes in an unknown location. Ukraine said it has worked with SpaceX to block Starlink internet terminals used by Russian forces, a move Kiev described as a major setback for Moscow’s battlefield operations. (East2West News)
“Starlinks included in the ‘white list’ are working – Russian terminals have already been blocked,” Ukrainian Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov said in a Telegram post, adding that the list was still being updated, Reuters reported.
The outlet said it could not independently verify the full scale of the outage, but cited several Ukrainian sources who reportedly said the impact appeared to be significant.
Russian war bloggers also acknowledged the outage, with the pro-Russian Telegram channel Two Majors saying there had been a major failure of Starlink terminals on the Russian side as of Wednesday evening, describing the blog as “extremely unpleasant,” according to the East2West news agency.
Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX, speaking at an event. (Richard Bord/WireImage/Getty Images)
Ukrainian military sources close to the front told Reuters Russian units were experiencing severe communications problems and were attempting to switch to Russian-made satellite systems.
“The entire troop command has collapsed. Assault operations have stopped in many areas,” Ukrainian defense adviser Serhiy Beskrestnov wrote on Telegram, Reuters reported.
Some frontline Russian attacks have been slowed or halted due to the loss of Starlink communications, with other operations scaled back as units struggle to coordinate, according to East2West.
The outlet also reported that Russian forces could no longer attach Starlink terminals to drones for battlefield guidance and coordination, citing Ukrainian sources.
East2West said Russia has no comparable domestic alternative to Starlink after failing to establish its own satellite internet system for frontline forces.
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Rows of boxed Starlink satellite internet terminals at a Russian military outpost in an undisclosed location. (East2West News)
Amidst the communications outage, East2West reported that Russia launched a new one spy satellite aboard a Soyuz-2.1b rocket from the Plesetsk military cosmodrome.
The Starlink disruption comes as The talks negotiated by the US pointed at the end of the war continues. US officials have said the US will continue to supply Ukraine with arms until a peace deal is reached.
