It’s okay, you want to shout. Wouldn’t the news have a bitter aftertaste. At the end of last week, the US company SpaceX finally blocked its Starlink terminals in Ukraine for so-called unauthorized users. That sounds a bit cryptic. But the decision could potentially have very far-reaching consequences for the war in Ukraine.
Starlink is the name of SpaceX’s satellite network that offers access to the Internet worldwide. And by “unauthorized users” in this case we mean Russian soldiers who have been using Starlink for years in order to have stable internet along the front line. Recently, however, all terminals in the Ukraine registered via the national administrative app Dija, the army application Delta or via the country’s citizens’ offices. If this does not happen, the satellite receiver will turn into an expensive piece of electronic waste, at least while it is on Ukrainian territory. That’s exactly what happened to countless Starlink devices on the Russian side of the front in the past few days.
To understand what this means for a modern army, it helps to take a look at the war in Ukraine. Both armies now use hundreds of thousands of small and large drones here every month. Almost every movement of a person or a machine is captured on camera, streamed live via satellite internet to the unit command centers and from there forwarded to the staff and headquarters. Some of these videos end up as clips on the Internet, in the countless blogs of analysts on X and Telegram. Much more important, however, is that commanders can monitor and evaluate war events in real time.
Starlink technology is essential for this. The Russian army also uses its own satellite internet, and some units are even laying fiber optic cables to the front. However, none of these alternatives offer such a stable, fast, cheap and mobile network. It remains to be seen how serious the Starlink blockade will be for the Russians. Not only most military experts agree that it will be a disadvantage for the Russian army, but also the Russian soldiers themselves.
Smuggling via third countries is flourishing
Which brings us to the bitter aftertaste. The fact that SpaceX has been helping Ukraine since the start of the war is a good thing. It is also the case that the devices are not officially delivered to Russia. Nevertheless, Russian soldiers have never made a secret of the fact that they were using smuggled terminals. Online units regularly and openly collect money for new devices.
Smuggling into Russia via third countries is flourishing. There must be thousands of devices on the Russian side by now. For years, Ukrainian government officials have tried unsuccessfully Elon Musk and SpaceX appeals to deactivate these devices in Russian hands. But it wasn’t until the Russian army began installing Starlink parts in long-range drones to turn them into remote-controlled bombs that SpaceX gave in. The new registration process was introduced within a short period of time.
Had SpaceX done this sooner, or had European governments helped Ukraine pressure the company, some Ukrainian defeats on the battlefield might have been avoided and lives saved. There is no satisfactory explanation as to why Russia only lost access to such important Western technology at the end of the fourth year of the war.
Instead, this story is another example of how the right decisions in favor of Ukraine are made far too late. A long list of such decisions could be given here. For example, the completely delayed delivery of F-16 fighter jets in 2024. Or the fact that European nations did too little last fall to make Ukraine at least a little fitter for this winter. In any case, the generators and mini-power plants only arrived after the Russians had already destroyed most of the country’s large energy plants in January.
Just a few weeks ago in January, the EU decision came into effect to no longer allow fuel produced with Russian crude oil onto the European market. This step will help reduce the demand for Russian oil and therefore the price on the world market. Even if it was only four years after the start of the war. Most of the time it works. Unfortunately, it’s often far too late.
date: 2026-02-10 10:31:00