Ukraine is working with Starlink to prevent Russian UAVs from using the company's satellite internet - Defense Minister

Ukraine is working with Elon Musk's SpaceX to prevent Russia from using the Starlink satellite system to guide drones, Defense Minister Mikhail Fedorov said, Reuters reports . Earlier this week, Ukrainian officials released photos of the wreckage of Russian long-range drones with Starlink terminals attached to their bodies.

“We thank SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell and Elon Musk personally for their quick response and beginning to work on resolving the situation,” Fedorov wrote on Telegram. According to him, Western technology should help the democratic world and protect civilians, and not be used for terrorism.

Advisor to the minister Sergei “Flash” Beskrestnov, who drew attention to the problem by publishing photos of drone debris from Starlink, said that “hundreds” of cases of attacks by Russian drones with such terminals have been recorded. On Tuesday, he said, Shahed-type drones, possibly controlled via Starlink, attacked a passenger train in northeastern Ukraine, killing five people. Kyiv called the attack a terrorist attack.

In February 2024, Elon Musk's company stated that it does not sell or supply Starlink to Russia or do business with the Russian government or military. Musk allowed the Starlink satellite network to operate over Ukraine in 2022 after Russia's full-scale invasion began, and the Ukrainian military still uses tens of thousands of terminals for battlefield communications.

Earlier it became known that Russian companies continue to import Starlink systems, which are used, among other things, by the Russian Armed Forces in the war with Ukraine. As the Nordsint investigative project found, systems whose sale to Russia is officially prohibited appeared in government compliance databases as complying with Russian technical regulations. In some cases, the manufacturer is not the American SpaceX, but companies from third countries.