Ukrainian troops have reported massive failures of Starlink communication equipment supplied by Elon Musk's SpaceX company on the frontline amid the country's ongoing conflict with Russia, The Financial Times reported on Friday, citing Ukrainian officials and soldiers
WASHINGTON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 07th October, 2022) Ukrainian troops have reported massive failures of Starlink communication equipment supplied by Elon Musk's SpaceX company on the frontline amid the country's ongoing conflict with Russia, The Financial Times reported on Friday, citing Ukrainian officials and soldiers.
The Starlink equipment failures led to a "catastrophic" loss of communication in recent weeks as Ukrainian military forces breached the frontline into Russian-controlled territory, according to a senior Ukrainian government official in the know.
The most significant outages were reported from the areas around Kherson and Zaporizhzhia, as well as along the frontline in eastern Kharkiv, Donetsk, and Luhansk regions, the report said.
According to the officials, the problems with communication took place when Ukrainian soldiers moved across the frontline into Russian-controlled parts of the country and prompted panicked calls to helplines.
"It is absolutely clear to me that this is being done by representatives of Starlink to prevent the usage of their technology by Russian occupation forces," the report cited Roman Sinicyn, a co-ordinator at the Serhiy Prytula Charity, a foundation that donates Starlink systems to the Ukrainian armed forces, as saying said.
Sinicyn added that in his view the Ukrainian military and SpaceX need to coordinate more closely, the report said.
Elon Musk commented on the report in one of his tweets, accusing the authors of the report of distorting the facts. He pointed out that, in contrast to what the report said, only a "small percentage" of Starlink terminals and services were paid for by the US government and other sources, whereas SpaceX expenses to supply Starlink terminals to Ukraine were $80 million and will increase to $100 million by the end of the year.
At the same time, Musk did not corroborate the reports about the Starlink terminals outages in Ukraine.
