Ukrainian soldiers have been encountering outages with their Starlink dishes in territory recently reclaimed from Russian forces, according to The Financial Times.
Many of the outages occurred when Ukrainian soldiers breached Russian-held territory, according to the FT, which cited Ukrainian government officials and troops. Some of the outages even led to a “catastrophic” loss of communication and sparked panicked calls from soldiers.
It’s no secret that Ukrainian troops have been using SpaceX’s satellite internet system to send encrypted messages and to launch drone strikes. As a result, the outages have threatened to undermine Ukraine’s ongoing counteroffensive to oust Russian troops from the country.
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk seems to be well aware of the problem. “As for what’s happening on the battlefield, that’s classified,” he wrote in a tweet responding to the FT’s reporting.
Musk also says he's in regular contact with Ukrainian officials about Starlink, which is supplying high-speed broadband to war-torn areas of the country. “Trying to do the right thing, which is not always clear,” he added.
It’s possible SpaceX turned off Starlink access in Russian-held territories of Ukraine to prevent the Kremlin from using any captured Starlink dishes. SpaceX has also warned about hacking and jamming attempts from Russian forces. In addition, the FT notes that despite the outages, two Ukrainian military sources managed to access Starlink in the newly liberated territories.
The news comes after Musk faced controversy for expressing his own stance on the war. Although SpaceX’s CEO said he supports Ukraine, he’s also worried Russia will retaliate by using nuclear weapons. This prompted him to post a tweet where he suggested Ukraine cede the disputed region of Crimea to Russia in an effort to end the war.
His post immediately faced pushback from across the Twittersphere, including Ukraine's president. But in defending his stance, Musk tweeted: “SpaceX’s out of pocket cost to enable and support Starlink in Ukraine is ~$80M so far. Our support for Russia is $0. Obviously, we are pro Ukraine. Trying to retake Crimea will cause massive death, probably fail and risk nuclear war. This would be terrible for Ukraine and Earth.”