Elon Musk\u2019s Starlink satellite systems are being used by Ukrainian forces on all front lines in the war with Russia, the country\u2019s spy chief has said. <\/p>\n
\u201cThey have proven themselves on the front lines. You can say what you want about whether [Starlink systems] are good or bad, but facts are facts. Absolutely all front lines are using them,\u201d Kyrylo Budanov, head of the Main Ukrainian Intelligence Directorate, said Saturday, according to Interfax Ukraine. <\/p>\n
Budanov was speaking at the annual Yalta European Strategy meeting organized by the Victor Pinchuk Foundation. <\/p>\n
The spy chief also gave a positive account of the difference Starlink is making in the war. <\/p>\n
\u201cThey have played and continue to play a significant role, because so many systems use the antennas, use the Starlink systems themselves, for communications, for drone transmissions, especially in terms of a remote command post and so on.\u201d <\/p>\n
Budanov also said Starlink coverage \u201cdid not work for some time\u201d in Russian-occupied Crimea, without elaborating. <\/p>\n
\u201cI can absolutely confirm that Starlink systems did not work for a certain period of time near Crimea. We immediately realized that there was simply no coverage there. That\u2019s probably all I can tell you,\u201d Budanov said. <\/p>\n
The spy chief\u2019s speech follows revelations about the satellite system\u2019s use in the war made in a new biography of Starlink\u2019s owner, written by Walter Isaacson and titled simply \u201cElon Musk.\u201d <\/p>\n
According to an excerpt from the book, Musk secretly ordered his engineers to turn off his company\u2019s Starlink satellite communications network near the Crimean coast last year to disrupt a Ukrainian sneak attack on the Russian naval fleet. <\/p>\n
As Ukrainian submarine drones strapped with explosives approached the Russian fleet, they \u201clost connectivity and washed ashore harmlessly,\u201d Isaacson writes. <\/p>\n
Musk\u2019s decision, which left Ukrainian officials begging him to turn the satellites back on, was driven by an acute fear that Russia would respond to a Ukrainian attack on Crimea with nuclear weapons, a fear driven home by Musk\u2019s conversations with senior Russian officials, according to Isaacson. <\/p>\n
\u201cThere was an emergency request from government authorities to activate Starlink all the way to Sevastopol,\u201d Musk posted on X. Sevastopol is a port city in Crimea. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe obvious intent being to sink most of the Russian fleet at anchor. If I had agreed to their request, then SpaceX would be explicitly complicit in a major act of war and conflict escalation.\u201d <\/p>\n\n
Elon Musk\u2019s Starlink satellite systems are being used by Ukrainian forces on all front lines in the war with Russia, the country\u2019s spy chief has said. \u201cThey have proven themselves on the front lines. You can say what you want about whether [Starlink systems] are good or bad, but facts are facts. Absolutely all front <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":8172,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-8171","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8171","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8171"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8171\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8172"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8171"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8171"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8171"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}