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DNIPRO, Ukraine — New details about how Elon Musk curtailed satellite internet service Starlink last year to prevent Ukraine from attacking Russian ships in Crimea have highlighted just how important the service is to Kiev’s armed forces — and how Success on the battlefield depends in part on the whims of a capricious billionaire.
Musk’s company SpaceX sent Starlink terminals to Ukraine after the Russian invasion in February 2022, when Moscow quickly shut down all other services. Since then, the high-speed satellite terminals have formed the backbone of the Ukrainian military’s digital communications. Nestled in trenches, camouflaged on armored vehicles, and humming in dusty command centers, the tiny WiFi terminals are so important that many soldiers say it would be life-threatening not to have them if they weren’t there.
Modern war zones are full of digital communications and require fast, secure internet. In Ukraine, Starlink’s data stream helps inject drone feeds from across the battlefield, allowing commanders to see enemy forces in real time and coordinate artillery strikes much faster than relaying the same information over the air.
According to official figures, there are around 42,000 Starlink terminals in Ukraine, enabling military, government and civilian communications, while Russia is relentlessly attacking civilian infrastructure. The terminals are also playing an increasingly important role in Ukraine’s counteroffensive, providing soldiers with portable communications in rural areas along the Southern Front that are either too remote or where cell towers have been damaged and destroyed.
The terminals also provide connectivity for smartphones and tablets, helping soldiers stay connected in group chats, to running apps that help calculate howitzer battery target information. Soldiers often use the same Starlink-connected devices to communicate with loved ones at home and abroad and to upload battlefield videos to social media.
In a recent deployment in the northeastern Luhansk region near Russian lines, a Starlink terminal transmitted WiFi data for a three-man attack drone team and allowed the pilot to monitor a group chat that provided real-time updates on enemy locations and movements. Victor Stelmakh, the leader of an attack drone unit with the 68th Fighter Brigade, used this information to deploy multiple drones and drop grenades on enemy positions. Several Russian soldiers were injured in the attacks, which were witnessed by Washington Post reporters.
Details of Musk’s role in curtailing Starlink service are included in a new biography of Walter Isaacson’s billionaire businessman. An excerpt from the book was published in a Washington Post opinion article. The book’s details about Musk’s role in the Starlink shutdown were first reported by CNN.
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The revelations in Isaacson’s book have reignited concerns about the impact that SpaceX and Musk owning are having in the war in Ukraine.
In October 2022, armed sea drones are ready to attack the Russian fleet, the biography says. Instead, the drones “lost connectivity and washed harmlessly ashore” because Musk secretly ordered engineers to shut down Starlink service near occupied Crimea, the Ukrainian peninsula that Russia illegally invaded and annexed in 2014.
According to the book, Ukrainian and US officials made efforts to restore the service and appealed directly to Musk. Musk finally agreed. “There has been an urgent request from government agencies to activate Starlink as far as Sevastopol,” Musk said on X, the company he owns, formerly known as Twitter, on Friday. He was referring to the port city in Crimea, which has long been the headquarters of the Russian Black Sea Fleet. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia maintained the headquarters under a lease with Ukraine.
In a conversation with Isaacson, Musk expressed his reluctance to use his services for such an attack. “The obvious intent was to sink most of the Russian fleet at anchor,” Musk told Isaacson. “If I had agreed to their request, SpaceX would be explicitly engaged in a major act of war and conflict escalation.”
SpaceX has not responded to a request for comment. Ukrainian officials point out that Russia’s 2014 invasion of Crimea and 2022 invasion of all of Ukraine were illegal aggression and alleged war crimes under international law.
On Thursday, Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said Musk’s decision to cut Starlink service near Crimea and other occupied areas of Ukraine had resulted in the deaths of civilians.
“As a result, civilians and children are being killed,” Podolyak posted on X.
“That’s the price of a cocktail of ignorance and big ego,” continued Podolyak. “However, the question remains: Why are some people so desperate to defend war criminals and their murderous lust? And do they now realize that they are doing evil and promoting evil?”
Ukraine’s Digital Transformation Minister Mykhailo Fedorov, whose ministry works directly with Starlink, did not respond to a request for comment.
Musk’s ability to control Ukraine’s military operations has alarmed some sections of the Pentagon, which has sent billions of dollars in weapons to help Ukraine defend against the Russian invasion. The Department of Defense struggled to contain it but agreed to cover the expensive Starlink service bills after Musk threatened to stop offering the service for free.
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Ukrainian troops have integrated Starlink into every corner of the conflict and rely on the service for virtually any task that requires digital communications.
One airborne reconnaissance soldier with the callsign Labrador, using the game’s term “IMBA” or imbalance, said Starlink offered a significant advantage over Russian capabilities. Multiple drone feeds on a single screen give commanders and scouts situational awareness, Labrador said. Surveillance drones monitoring artillery fire could send quick and precise impact locations, he said, allowing howitzer crews to quickly adjust their aim and hit a target.
Labrador, like other soldiers, spoke on the condition that, according to Ukrainian military rules, he could only be identified by his call sign.
Losing Starlink, he said, would force Ukraine to resort to more traditional means of communication, such as radio or other inferior alternatives. It could be done, he said, but it would require difficult compromises. For example, if digital communications are used between trenches, soldiers may need to leave relative safety to relay information verbally, he said.
“These are additional risks,” he said. “It can be said that the lack of an alternative to Starlink will increase the mortality and injury rates.”
Internet access via Starlink has also helped soldiers access training manuals and get more information about the advanced weapons and equipment they received from the West, said Rusyn, the deputy commander of the 49th Carpathian-Sich Infantry Battalion.
“If they stopped working at some point, it wouldn’t be the end of the world,” Rusyn said, “but it would significantly worsen our situation at the front, our clout.”
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Starlink is also a vital lifeline for civilians.
A year ago, after a surprise Ukrainian advance liberated large areas in the country’s northeast, civilians emerged from a Russian-controlled information bubble. With most cell phone and internet services disrupted for months, they were unable to connect with their loved ones elsewhere in Ukraine. And even after cities and towns came back under Ukrainian control, some were unable to contact their families for days to confirm that they had survived.
In Izyum, for example, when Ukrainian soldiers set up a base in the town and hooked up their Starlink – which had been slightly damaged by an earlier shelling – locals gathered to connect to the network and speak to relatives, sometimes for the first time since the beginnings of Russia’s invasion in February 2022.
Journalists covering the war also regularly use Starlink as the only way to send news reports, images and videos from areas where there is no other viable internet service.
Ukraine’s use of Starlink has drawn backlash in Moscow, including experiments with secret electronic warfare capabilities designed to neutralize the service, according to leaked US intelligence assessments obtained by The Washington Post.
The Russian military spent months testing ways to cut communications links over Ukraine, the classified documents say. However, the documents did not allow conclusions to be drawn about whether the tests were successful or had the intended effect.
Siobhán O’Grady and David L. Stern in Kiev contributed to this report.
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