Just before Russian troops invaded Ukraine’s northern border this month, soldiers with Ukraine’s 92nd Assault Brigade lost a vital resource: The Starlink satellite internet service the soldiers use for communications, intelligence gathering and drone attacks became extremely slow.
Starlink, operated by Elon Musk’s SpaceX, has been essential to the Ukrainian military since the early days of the war with Russia. Without the full service, Ukrainian soldiers say they couldn’t quickly communicate and share information about surprise attacks, forcing them to rely on sending text messages — an experience that has been repeated on the new northern front, Ukrainian soldiers, officials and electronic warfare experts say.
The root cause of the blackout is increased interference from Russia.
Russian forces expanded their presence near Ukraine’s second-largest city, Kharkiv, this month, deploying more powerful electronic weapons and more advanced tools aimed at disrupting Starlink services, Ukrainian officials said. The advance poses a major threat to Ukraine, which has so far managed to outwit Russian forces with the help of forward-line connectivity and other technologies, but the new Russian advance has put it on the defensive.
The outage is believed to be the first time that Russia has caused a widespread disruption to Starlink. If Russia is successful in further disruptions, it would mark a tactical shift in the conflict and highlight Ukraine’s vulnerability and reliance on services provided by Musk’s company. As U.S. and other governments work with SpaceX, the outage raises broader questions about Starlink’s reliability against technologically advanced adversaries.
Starlink works by beaming internet connections from satellites orbiting Earth. Pizza-box-sized antenna terminals on the ground receive the signals and then distribute the connections like a Wi-Fi router to laptops, phones, and other nearby devices. Starlink has been providing vital internet service to Ukraine since 2022, and soldiers rely on it to guide internet-connected drones used for surveillance, weapons, and more.
Ukraine’s Digital Minister Mykhailo Fedorov said in an interview this week that Russia’s latest attacks on Starlink appear to have used new, more advanced techniques, even though the service has so far held up remarkably well against widespread battlefield interference with electronic warfare, jamming and other forms of communications interference.
But Russia is currently “testing various mechanisms to disrupt the quality of Starlink connections, because it is very important to us,” Fedorov said, without providing details about what he called a “powerful” electronic weapons system. Ukraine is in constant contact with SpaceX to resolve the issue, he added.
SpaceX did not respond to a request for comment.
The Russian Defense Ministry did not respond to a request for comment. An official in charge of Russia’s electronic warfare activities told state media last month that the military had put Starlink on a “target list” and was developing capabilities to counter the service.
Fedorov said Starlink service should improve soon, but soldiers and officials said some of the outages appeared to coincide with the Russian attack, putting Ukraine’s already-stretched military at a further disadvantage if they occur at a critical moment on the battlefield, they said.
“We are losing the electronic warfare battle,” Ajax, whose call sign is deputy commander of the 92nd Achilles Attack Drone Battalion, said in an interview about the challenges his unit faced after the Starlink connection failed.
“The day before the attack it suddenly stopped,” said Ajax, who spoke on the condition that he be identified by his call sign in accordance with Ukrainian military policy. “It became extremely slow.”
A drone pilot with the call sign “Cartel” said confusion put his entire unit at a disadvantage. He said he was in his garage without food or sleeping bags during the first armored attack of the Russian offensive this month. His unit launched a drone attack but was hampered by connection problems with Starlink. Communications were so slow that soldiers had to send text messages over chat apps, and even then, messages took a long time to get through.
“The first few hours the front was very dynamic. The enemy was moving, and so were we,” he said. “We had to communicate quickly.”
He said his troops fought off the Russians for three days, but not without difficulties. “Everything became more complicated,” he said. “Everything became more time-consuming.”
Kari A. Bingen, a former Pentagon official and electronic warfare expert, said Starlink and other satellite communications could be disrupted by using high-powered radio frequencies to overwhelm the connection link. The unseen attacks would typically be launched from vehicles with large radio towers mounted on top, she said.
“It’s a natural target for the Russian military,” said Bingen, director of the Aerospace Security Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank. “It’s degrading the Ukrainian military’s ability to communicate on the battlefield.”
There are many explanations for Starlink outages in Ukraine over the past year. Several experts say Russia has improved its techniques for interfering with signals between satellites and Starlink terminals on the ground, using more powerful and precise jamming devices. Others suggest service may have been disrupted by drones equipped with specialized electronic weapons designed to disrupt Starlink’s GPS signals, the global positioning system used to locate satellites.
Sudden surges in Starlink usage can also lead to poor service quality — technical restrictions meant to prevent the Russian military from using Starlink have crippled service for Ukrainian troops on the front lines — and disruptions can be more random, like when SpaceX reported a global service outage due to a solar storm earlier this month.
During the conflict, the Ukrainian military has tried various methods to protect Starlink from attack, including placing the terminals in holes in the ground or covering them with wire mesh. Infozakhist, a Ukrainian company that works with the military and specializes in making electronic warfare tools, said it doesn’t believe these makeshift solutions are effective.
Starlink gives Musk great leverage in warfare because he can control where satellite service is available and choose to cut off access. Ukrainian authorities have directly asked Musk to turn on Starlink access during military operations to carry out drone attacks over enemy lines, but the billionaire hasn’t always approved of the requests. The U.S. government, which has purchased Starlink terminals for Ukraine, has sometimes intervened in the negotiations.
Starlink is not being sold directly to Russia, but Ukrainian officials publicly warned earlier this year that Russia was using Starlink terminals purchased from third-party vendors, potentially undermining Ukraine’s connectivity advantage.
Experts have warned that Ukraine is overly reliant on such a vital resource on a single company, especially one run by an unpredictable figure like Musk. But Ukraine’s reliance on Starlink is unlikely to decrease, as there are few alternatives to such a comprehensive and reliable service.
Fedorov said the Ukrainian government is constantly testing new systems, and that the military has a special system for maritime drones and has destroyed a number of Russian ships in the Black Sea.
“But of course there is no mass-produced equivalent,” he said.
For Ukrainian commander Ajax, the loss of Starlink service brought back unpleasant memories of the war. While fighting near the Russian border in 2022, his troops were sometimes cut off from Starlink, cutting off drone footage used to target artillery fire from afar. Instead, they deployed soldiers to covertly monitor enemy positions and direct attacks.
“It became the old-fashioned way of doing things on the radio,” he said. “You had to say, ‘Move 100 feet left.’ It was very strange.”
Andrew E. Kramer Reporting from Kyiv, Ukraine Olha Kotiujanska From Kharkov and Kramatorsk.
