Illegal Starlink terminals help Russia in its war against Ukraine - The Washington Post
Kyiv • UNN
The Russian military is massively using illegally obtained Starlink terminals to improve coordination of attacks on Ukrainian positions. This has helped the Russian military to narrow the technological gap.
The Russian military is massively using illegally obtained terminals to improve coordination during attacks, to increase the effectiveness of drone and artillery strikes on Ukrainian troops. This was reported by The Washington Post, according to UNN.
Details
It is noted that the terminals, which allow commanders to monitor the battlefield using drones and provide secure communication between soldiers, are subject to sanctions that prohibit the supply of American electronic devices to Moscow. However, there is a black market through which Russians obtain Starlink terminals. Their proliferation is an important factor in their recent successes in the Donbas offensive.
Ukrainian officers from units in the Donetsk region say that Russia has narrowed the technological gap, making its forces more cohesive and increasing the number and accuracy of attacks.
All of this is causing Kyiv's dissatisfaction with Elon Musk, the mercurial CEO of SpaceX, which owns the Starlink technology. The Ukrainian military directly criticizes the entrepreneur for not taking sufficient measures to stop the illegal use of the technology, claiming that Musk seems to be favorable to Russia.
According to Ukrainian soldiers, the Russians have now begun to mirror Ukraine's actions, using Starlink in a similar way.
Kyiv and Washington face difficulties in resolving the problem of Russia's use of Starlink, analysts say, especially in light of Moscow's success in circumventing sanctions and the technical difficulty of denying access to the Starlink network without harming Ukrainian troops.
Starlink terminals have been appearing at Russian positions all year, but only in the last few months has their impact become truly tangible. The Russians have started using them to coordinate their offensives. The Ukrainian military, which operates reconnaissance drones near Novohrodivka, southeast of the strategically important Pokrovsk, said they spotted Starlink on Russian positions last month.
Starlink can disable individual terminals by their identification numbers and block signal reception areas - this is called "geofencing". A Starlink source claims that the company is technically capable of determining the location of active terminals based on their satellite signals, but in practice, it can be difficult to locate a user at the front line of a war zone where Ukrainian and Russian troops are operating.
