No connection: Blocking Starlink for the Russian military has changed the situation at the front in Ukraine

As far as is known, the Russian military is trying to bypass restrictions on Starlink use through “drops,” a term describing residents of Ukraine who agree to register terminals in their own names in exchange for money. Ukraine’s Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War issued a statement saying that families of Ukrainian POWs are being blackmailed from Russia and pressured to register terminals in their names. One Russian channel focused on drones says it personally knows of 200 successful registrations through “drops.”

Meanwhile, the Ukrainian hacker group “256 Cyber Assault Division” said that it had used fake bots on Telegram to collect information on the location of nearly 2,500 Russian terminals, receiving almost $6,000 in payment for fake registration services and identifying 31 Ukrainian citizens willing to become “drops.” The operation was confirmed by Ukraine’s Defense Ministry, and warnings (1, 2) can be found in Russian pro-war channels about the “theft” of Telegram channels for the purpose of deceiving Russian servicemen seeking to restore a Starlink signal.

After the Starlink shutdown, Russian volunteers began raising money for Gazprom’s Yamal satellite internet system. But those are geostationary satellites, which means they are much higher than the Starlink constellation and therefore operate with a signal delay. In addition, the dishes themselves are bulky and require a complicated setup procedure. One pro-war channel posted the following review of the Gazprom system from troops on the front line:

▪️ “It works on a beam system. To set up the dish you need a beam code. To find out the code you need...internet. Starlink itself, when activated, gives one or two hours of free access for setup, and so on.

▪️ “No stability at all. The wind blows, snow or rain starts, the dish shifts, the beam is lost, and you have to go set it up again.

▪️ “Fees. Very expensive, plus the high cost of the dish itself. The guys complain they bought 50 GB for 6,000 rubles. Imagine how long that package volume will last for the number of people one dish serves.

▪️ “Compactness. There is none. It is a huge dish that heats up and tells everyone, ‘There are people here, shoot here.’”

▪️ “Connection speed. The declared 100 Mbps exists only on paper. In reality it’s [just] enough to send a message.”

The same channel says Yamal is completely unsuitable for organizing live streams or transmitting images between neighboring units, and that it could not even handle a group video call. Users are separately angered that access to Telegram via Gazprom’s satellite internet is possible only through a paid VPN service.

A Ukrainian military expert told The Insider that large satellite dishes used as alternatives to Starlink really have started to be noticed in the combat zone, and that their presence often makes it possible to determine the location of company and battalion command posts. According to him, whereas previously almost “every trench” was connected to a single information-sharing field, now full internet-based communication on the Russian side will be available only to the upper levels of the chain of command, while the rest will have to make do with standard voice messages until something changes.

Overall, Starlink cannot be considered an irreplaceable element of Russian frontline communications. Without it, situational awareness will decline, and time will be needed to rebuild command-and-control chains (by Ukrainian estimates, this will take up to six months), but Moscow’s troops will not be left entirely without the means to send and receive messages.