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Musk’s Starlinks are as important to the Ukrainian minister as US rocket launchers
In a recent interview with the Associated Press in his office at the ministry’s headquarters, Ukraine’s Digital Transformation Minister Mykhailo Fedorov compared Space X’s donation of Starlink satellite terminals for internet connectivity to US-supplied multiple rocket launchers in terms of their importance for the Ability of Ukraine to defend itself against Russian invasion. “Thousands of lives were saved,” Fedorov said, emphasizing the importance of mobile communications for civilian and military purposes during the war.
Fedorov said the most difficult places to maintain service are the Donetsk, Zaporizhia, Odessa and Kyiv regions in the center and east of the country. And he explains that sometimes less than half of the cell towers in the capital Kyiv are working because Russian airstrikes have destroyed or damaged the infrastructure that powers them.
Ukraine has about 30,000 cellphone towers, and the government is trying to hook them up to generators so they keep running even when airstrikes damage the power grid. But for now, satellite systems like Starlink are the only alternative that Ukrainians could rely on more if power outages last longer. “We should understand that in this case, the Starlinks and the towers that connect to the generators will be the basic infrastructure for the Internet,” Federov said.