A major Starlink outage on the Ukraine front has severely hampered Russian military communications and drone operations, following a shutdown by Elon Musk.
MOSCOW: Russian military bloggers reported a sweeping outage of Starlink internet terminals across the Ukraine front on Thursday.
The disruption came after network owner Elon Musk shut them down following a plea from Kyiv.
At least nine bloggers close to the Russian army confirmed connections had been lost.
They warned this could weaken Moscow’s drone warfare capabilities and hinder coordination between front-line units.
“This is all very bad, especially given how crucial communications are at the front,” blogger Roman Alekhin wrote on Telegram.
Moscow currently has no home-produced alternative to the satellite internet terminals.
Ukraine has also widely used the terminals for front-line communications throughout the four-year war.
“‘This is our Achilles’ heel,’ one good commander told me long ago about Starlink,” Russian military blogger Alexander Kots said in a post.
The bloggers are known to be close to regular troops and supportive of the war.
They have frequently clashed with the Russian defence ministry over their publication of uncensored information directly from the front.
Musk, who runs Starlink through his SpaceX company, hailed progress last week in stopping Russian troops from using the devices.
“Looks like the steps we took to stop the unauthorised use of Starlink by Russia have worked,” he posted on his X social media platform.
Ukraine’s Defence Minister Mykhailo Fedorov praised the move earlier this week as having “delivered real results.”
Kyiv first reported that Russia was using the terminals in January.
Ukrainian officials said Russian drones equipped with Starlink terminals could better avoid electronic jamming and hit targets more accurately.
The four-year war has been marked by extensive use of drones, including long-range attack craft and smaller short-range devices.
