A new “white list” from SpaceX is shutting off Russia’s illicit access to Starlink’s satellite internet across the front line.
At shortly before 3:00 a.m. Kyiv time on Feb. 5, Elon Musk retweeted a new guide from Ukraine’s Digital Transformation Ministry for registering a Starlink terminal within UkraSubsequently, a series of alarmed Russian social media posts indicate that Starlink terminals were disconnecting en masse along the front.
Three Ukrainian commanders, speaking to the Kyiv Independent on the condition of anonymity, reported intercepting messages from Russian forces complaining about Starlink terminals failing in large numbers.
Serhiy “Flash” Beskrestnov, a longtime commentator on electronic warfare more recently appointed as advisor to Defense Minister Mykhaylo Fedorov, said the “enemy at the front doesn’t have a problem, the enemy has a catastrophe.”
why would a country’s military rely on services from the United States owned by a crazy guy who will flip switches for clout
What replacement services are available? The American service actually works. Making your own would cost an order of magnitude more (as your contractors mysteriously “lose” half the money and bill the defence ministry 10 million roubles for “pens”) and a decade of your time.
Maybe they could hire Chinese firms to do it but I think China has a tendency to keep its military technology to itself.
A big part of russian strategy (both military and political) is turning the wests own tools against it. Its how they manage to have such an outsized degree of political reach despite having the economy of a middle european power.
Because Putin has been ransacking the country for decades and they relied on stolen tech and decades old military equipment to get by.
Of course one can just not have internet also…
That’s because it didn’t. Likely used it for r&r rather than critical infrastructure.
Lol, no. There was downed drone with starlink onboard.
Ok, I have a rope to sell you.
Musk could have done that a long time ago. Instead he was blocking Ukraine’s.
Fuck that traitor.
He’s truly human garbage.
He’s only doing it now because his name got out on the Epstein emails. The russians lost their kompromat on him.
and only temporarily
This is an interesting point. It could be pure coincidence but we can’t overlook the fact that Musk’s actions noticeably changed from helping to hinder Ukraine’s war efforts not too long after a phone call with Putin.
Always the ones you most expect.
I’m surprised he doesn’t overtly support the Russians, like most of MAGA
Maybe all of DOGE was about finding Epstein files content, and failed.
And now that they have been released, Musk realises there is no kompromat on him so he can recover some PR points or somethingThey embarrassed him many years ago, it’s the whole reason SpaceX exists.
Can you elaborate for the uninformed?
Before SpaceX, back when Musk had his X.com/PayPal money, he tried to buy an ICBM from Russia with the purpose of modifying it to launch a mission to Mars*.
The last meeting they had about it, Russia basically laughed him out of the room after they’d already tried to fleece him. So he founded SpaceX to get there instead.
- Mars mission was really just to move some plants and bacteria to Mars - within the space community, there are some that want to limit/prevent exploration of extraterrestrial bodies for sake of contamination, that our bacterial load might change the course of natural evolution on a planet. Musk wanted to ‘pollute’ Mars in order to make that argument no long viable.
Early SpaceX is pretty wild.
Good observation. Now, on top of that he might have privileged information about the imminent fall of the ruSS economy … making him lose his horrible bet in favor the invaders.
It’s hard to believe that they don’t have much more than the public.
putin likely had krompromat on him.
It is my impression that deep strike drones previously flew pre-programmed (attempting to locate the target using satnav, and some fancy versions using ground scanning lidar).
The problem of deep strike drones becoming remote-controlled seems recent, and Ukraine has been experiencing an increasing frequency of those since autumn. They’ve been attacking moving targets. One recently hit a locomotive moving on a railway, the other hit a bus full of miners.
I don’t know the background - was Starlink responsive or unresponsive, or did Ukrainians wait for a statistical curve of adoption to present itself and become certain, before asking Starlink to pull the rug.
What is clear that Ukraine has worked out a way of registering and whitelisting their own Starlink terminals, and hasn’t yet fully completed the process, so they’re in a hurry too.
Next step: war of the mesh networks. Russian drones come in swarms and try to provide connectivity to those before them. It dulls the edge of the swarm (harder to overwhelm defenses) but requires Ukrainians to work hard at gunning down the flying relay nodes.
“Illicit” is definitely the wrong word.
Good on Musk for doing that, finally.
He probably didn’t do it but the workers that work at starlink
