On February 4, pro-war military bloggers reported that Russia’s frontline troops had lost access to Starlink satellite Internet. While Ukrainian forces have had official access to Starlink since the start of the full-scale invasion, many Russian units have relied on contraband devices as a key element of their battlefield communications. Until now, Elon Musk’s SpaceX has appeared willing to turn a blind eye to Russia’s unauthorized use of Starlink. Previous system failures that were mistaken for targeted outages turned out to be false alarms, and Ukrainian officials warned that cutting off Starlink access in Russian-occupied territories would be “catastrophic” for Kyiv’s frontline drone warfare. This time, however, the outage is not accidental: it comes after Russian troops started equipping their own drones with Starlink en masse and carrying out attacks on the Ukrainian army’s rear positions. Now, Kyiv and SpaceX face the challenge of engineering a Starlink blackout for the Russian side without hampering the Ukrainian military.
Other than the title being the most meaningful comment in this matter, this article explains the broader context of starlink on the front and possible alternatives.
It doesn’t answer the question, possibly because it does not have the evidence to confirm that it’s because the Kremlin now can afford some other alternative. Time will tell.
Whitelist every official Ukrainian station for use in the region, deny everyone else.
That is what they are doing now, but simply whitelisting every terminal in Ukraine isn’t a simple task. There are military purchased ones, then there are civilian purchased ones, then there are donated ones, and even ones purchased by soldiers for their own use that the military isn’t aware of.
The Ukrainian soldiers when pressed from above, didn’t want to register their unofficial dishes for fear of losing them for other military purposes, so between that, and all the other potential problems, the military decided not to do it. It would also need to be country wide including civilians, so you’d need some country wide process that every new dish needs to go through, and every dish is kept tabs on should it be captured.
This late January though, they caught Russia putting the dishes on drones, and these long range drones were able to be remotely operated, and were resistant to jamming making them very hard to intercept, and they were being used to hit civilian targets (they hit a train and something else I think) so it really came down to okay we can’t ignore this anymore.
Ukraine asked SpaceX to do something, and within a few days (maybe less) SpaceX had put a blanket speed limit on ALL dishes in Ukraine. This stopped Ukraine from using drones as well. The follow up was a whitelist which were now seeing the results of.
The reason this wasn’t done before is because Ukraine didn’t want to do it. The reason it’s happening now is Ukraine said shit, we have to do it.
Edit: And while overall this is good and required and should have been done ages ago, it’s also not without consequences. Not all Ukrainian positions were able to activate their dishes in time and were also cut off, but Russia is impacted more.
There are military purchased ones, then there are civilian purchased ones, then there are donated ones, and even ones purchased by soldiers for their own use that the military isn’t aware of.
The Ukrainian soldiers when pressed from above, didn’t want to register their unofficial dishes for fear of losing them for other military purposes, so between that, and all the other potential problems, the military decided not to do it. It would also need to be country wide including civilians, so you’d need some country wide process that every new dish needs to go through, and every dish is kept tabs on should it be captured.
These are really good points, and shows how spoiled I am, I am used to a working admin, I am a civilian and here in Sweden, beurocracy tends to work ok for the most part.
I also didn’t consider the risk of Starlink systems being reallocated after being registered by the government.
Thank you for pointing this out to me, I genuinely didn’t consider either of these points.
If I hadn’t seen one of the news articles a week or two ago where one of the Ukrainian military higher ups were talking about it, I wouldn’t have either. I had always wondered why they hadn’t just done it as well.
And russia probably trying to register their dishes as ukrainian ones or setting up a shop to register and then import them. It’s all messy, and may seem heavy-handed and/or short-sighted, but nevertheless free for all Starlink connection was an outlier in an otherwise tight air defence system. Just like having a workplace ban on social media BUT everyone having some braincells to install a VPN visiting them no problem.
Idk how UAF communicates with Starlink and if they react fast, if they share enough information, but the latter has location data of each connected dish, so in the best probable condiditions there is an ability to shut down network services in real time.
so in the best probable condiditions there is an ability to shut down network services in real time.
I think you’re right about this. Shutting down in real time if they think the dish is compromised should be possible, but whitelisting them requires more overhead to verify authenticity, especially for civilians.
That is what they are doing now, but simply whitelisting every terminal in Ukraine isn’t a simple task. There are military purchased ones, then there are civilian purchased ones, then there are donated ones, and even ones purchased by soldiers for their own use that the military isn’t aware of.
The Ukrainian soldiers when pressed from above, didn’t want to register their unofficial dishes for fear of losing them for other military purposes, so between that, and all the other potential problems, the military decided not to do it. It would also need to be country wide including civilians, so you’d need some country wide process that every new dish needs to go through, and every dish is kept tabs on should it be captured.
This late January though, they caught Russia putting the dishes on drones, and these long range drones were able to be remotely operated, and were resistant to jamming making them very hard to intercept, and they were being used to hit civilian targets (they hit a train and something else I think) so it really came down to okay we can’t ignore this anymore.
Ukraine asked SpaceX to do something, and within a few days (maybe less) SpaceX had put a blanket speed limit on ALL dishes in Ukraine. This stopped Ukraine from using drones as well. The follow up was a whitelist which were now seeing the results of.
The reason this wasn’t done before is because Ukraine didn’t want to do it. The reason it’s happening now is Ukraine said shit, we have to do it.
Edit: And while overall this is good and required and should have been done ages ago, it’s also not without consequences. Not all Ukrainian positions were able to activate their dishes in time and were also cut off, but Russia is impacted more.
These are really good points, and shows how spoiled I am, I am used to a working admin, I am a civilian and here in Sweden, beurocracy tends to work ok for the most part.
I also didn’t consider the risk of Starlink systems being reallocated after being registered by the government.
Thank you for pointing this out to me, I genuinely didn’t consider either of these points.
If I hadn’t seen one of the news articles a week or two ago where one of the Ukrainian military higher ups were talking about it, I wouldn’t have either. I had always wondered why they hadn’t just done it as well.
I think that was me getting schooled in the post mentioned a few weeks back
There’s also the problem of Russia using captured dishes, iirc
And russia probably trying to register their dishes as ukrainian ones or setting up a shop to register and then import them. It’s all messy, and may seem heavy-handed and/or short-sighted, but nevertheless free for all Starlink connection was an outlier in an otherwise tight air defence system. Just like having a workplace ban on social media BUT everyone having some braincells to install a VPN visiting them no problem.
Idk how UAF communicates with Starlink and if they react fast, if they share enough information, but the latter has location data of each connected dish, so in the best probable condiditions there is an ability to shut down network services in real time.
I think you’re right about this. Shutting down in real time if they think the dish is compromised should be possible, but whitelisting them requires more overhead to verify authenticity, especially for civilians.