Kyiv, Ukraine – Russian military bloggers on Thursday reported a sweeping outage of Starlink internet terminals across the Ukraine front, claiming Elon Musk had shut them down following a plea from Kyiv.
At least nine bloggers close to the Russian army said connections had been lost, adding that this could weaken Moscow’s ability to wage drone warfare and hinder coordination between units.
Russia does not have a home-produced alternative to the satellite internet terminals.
“This is all very bad, especially given how crucial communications are at the front,” blogger Roman Alekhin wrote on Telegram.
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Ukraine has also widely used the terminals throughout the four-year war to enable front-line communications.
“‘This is our Achilles’ heel,’ one good commander told me long ago about Starlink,” Alexander Kots, another blogger, said in a post.
Russia’s military bloggers are close to regular troops and units fighting in the front.
Supportive of the war, they have frequently clashed with the Russian defense ministry over the conduct of the campaign and their publication of uncensored information directly from the front.
Musk, who runs the Starlink network through his SpaceX company, last week hailed progress in stopping Russian troops using the devices.
“Looks like the steps we took to stop the unauthorized use of Starlink by Russia have worked,” he said on X, which he also owns.
Ukraine’s Defence Minister Mykhailo Fedorov hailed the move earlier this week as having “delivered real results.”
