Posted on 02/15/24
| News Source: WSJ
Ukraine’s top military-intelligence officer said Russian invasion forces in his country are using thousands of Starlink satellite internet terminals, and that the network has been active in occupied parts of Ukraine for “quite a long time.”
Lt. Gen. Kyrylo Budanov’s comments in an interview suggest that Russia is starting to acquire Starlink terminals, made by Elon Musk’s SpaceX, at a scale that could cut into a major Ukrainian battlefield advantage. Ukraine’s government said last year that around 42,000 terminals are used by the military, hospitals, businesses and aid organizations.
Starlink, which is more secure than cell or radio signals, is considered so vital to Ukrainian operations that the Pentagon struck a deal with SpaceX last year to help fund access for Kyiv’s forces. Up to now, Russian forces have had no similarly secure communications system.
Russian private firms buy the terminals off intermediaries who pass off purchases as for personal use and deliver the equipment to Russia via neighboring countries, including former Soviet republics, Budanov said. Russian army units down to company level were seeking to acquire Starlink terminals, often by collecting money for the purchases, he said.
“It’s an open market,” said Budanov, who heads Ukraine’s military-intelligence agency, known as HUR. “It’s not a military item.”
A search for Starlink terminals on Russian search engine Yandex.ru yields numerous dealers in Moscow and outside the Russian capital who promise to install the systems across the country and the Russian-occupied territories of Ukraine.
One website, strlnk.ru, promised “tested performance” in the occupied areas of Crimea, Luhansk, Donetsk and Kherson with monthly fees starting at $100 a month. The website provided contacts for a dealer, including a Russian cellphone number and a Yandex email. A representative of the firm declined to speak to a Wall Street Journal reporter.
Another website that uses the name of a German appliance company sells Starlink terminals for nearly 300,000 rubles, or just over $3,000.
Like other space communications systems, Starlink relies on satellites in orbit, infrastructure called ground stations and terminals to allow people to tap in to its high-speed internet connections. Customers use a flat antenna array that needs an unobstructed view of the sky to connect with satellites.