SpaceX moved to cut off Russian access to Starlink this week, disabling connectivity over Ukraine while maintaining a whitelist of approved Ukrainian terminals.
The new measure has spurred excitement among Ukrainian officials and pundits close to the war, who have said that Russian troops were increasingly using Starlink to guide long-range strikes and coordinate forces.
“The enemy reports a mass Starlink blackout among Russian units at the front,” wrote Serhii Sternenko, the leader of a major Ukrainian crowdfunding organization for combat drones, on Thursday.
“If this is true, then the Ukrainian army will regain its advantage in communications, and the enemy will have a number of problems with controlling troops at the tactical level,” he added.
Serhii “Flash” Beskrestnov, an advisor on drone warfare for Ukraine’s defense ministry, wrote that the move had disrupted Russian ground assaults in some frontline areas.
“The enemy doesn’t even have a problem on the fronts. The enemy has a catastrophe,” he wrote on Telegram.
Due to US sanctions after the Kremlin’s full-scale invasion began in 2022, SpaceX doesn’t sell Starlink terminals to Russia.
But Ukrainian troops have long raised concerns that Moscow’s troops were acquiring terminals from the black market, with Kyiv saying it’s found the US tech in downed reconnaissance drones.
Pressure for SpaceX to curb Russian access reached a fever pitch last month, as Ukrainian defense officials said they’d begun seeing Starlink terminals on long-range strike drones.
Cutting off the Kremlin’s forces from Starlink, however, has been more complicated than simple geofencing. Ukrainian troops also use Starlink, so disabling access in contested regions would have affected Kyiv’s operations.
Ukraine scrambles to register terminals
That appears to be changing with the new whitelist. For the last few days, Ukraine’s defense ministry and Telegram influencers have been calling on troops to quickly register their terminals under the country’s DELTA battlespace management system.
The access restrictions are likely to extend to civilian areas far from the front lines, due to concerns of Starlink being used to guide the Russian Shahed-type attack drones targeting cities.
Businesses must apply for access via an online portal, while civilians were told to bring all their private Starlink terminals to administrative centers along with a national ID.
The whitelist is updated every day, said Ukraine’s defense minister, Mykhailo Fedorov.
“We continue to verify Starlink terminals. The first batch of terminals that were included in the whitelist is already working,” he wrote on Thursday.
Elon Musk, the founder of SpaceX, urged Ukrainian users to join the whitelist.
“Important to register your Starlink terminal if in Ukraine,” he wrote on social media on Thursday.
The connectivity changes have also been reported to cut Starlink access for terminals traveling faster than 75 kilometers per hour, or roughly 46 miles per hour, in an effort to shut down attack-drone guidance.
Disruption begins for Russian troops
It’s not yet clear exactly how the new Starlink measures will affect the war, but early reports from Russia and Ukraine indicate the move is already affecting the battlefield.
Rybar, a prominent Telegram channel run by a Russian military blogger, wrote on Thursday that the Starlink restrictions would “temporarily slow down” Moscow’s combat operations.
The channel, which had until this week been calling on its followers to donate or fund Starlink terminals for Russian troops, also wrote on February 1 that the Kremlin needed to start developing “domestic equivalents” of communication systems for the front lines.
Rybar downplayed the impact on Russian operations, saying that the Starlink whitelist could also play to the Kremlin’s advantage.
“If the system is hacked, such a list would give Russian troops the geolocation of numerous Ukrainian Armed Forces positions,” he wrote in a separate post.
Roman Alekhin, another Russian military blogger, raised concerns on Thursday that Russian forces may not have ready alternatives to Starlink and might instead temporarily rely on fiber optics for frontline communications.
“This is all very bad, especially considering the huge need for communications at the front,” he wrote.
Ukrainian Telegram channels, meanwhile, hailed the outage as a potential significant blow to Russian forces.
“The enemy even installed terminals on tanks to adjust fire online,” Sternenko wrote. “There will be no more. This is just the beginning.”
The Wild Hornets, a Ukrainian drone maker, posted a photo it said showed the wreckage of a Russian Gerbera decoy drone that bore a vulgarity-laden message directed at Musk.
Still, some Ukrainian forces also reported being affected by the outages.
“It was found out from our troops that there were problems with those who did not promptly submit lists for private Starlinks,” wrote Beskrestnov, the Ukrainian drone advisor. “The processing process is ongoing.”
Fedorov, who was confirmed as Ukraine’s new defense minister last month, thanked SpaceX and Musk for introducing the Starlink measures.
‘Thanks to the first steps taken in recent days, no Ukrainians have been killed by Russian drones using Starlink — and that is priceless,” he wrote.
SpaceX did not respond to a request for comment sent outside regular business hours by Business Insider.
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