Thread by @dim0kq

Russians can also use Starlink now?! WHAT?!

I am Ukrainian who delivered hundreds of Starlinks to Ukrainian Army, and I know this topic well.

Russians now use Starlinks for their warfare against Ukraine. Elon Musk understands this.

A 🧵explaining the Starlink saga (again)

^ in the original picture, I am preparing another 24 Starlinks to depart to Ukrainian Armed Forces from my charity @dzygaspaw. We find high-tech that Ukrainian Heroes can use.

You can read more here -
You can donate here - dzygaspaw.com/starlink-exper…
dzygaspaw.com/support

Here is my TLDR on Russians using Starlink:

1. Yes, Russians use Starlinks for their warfare.
2. No, they didn't do much of it before.
3. Russians can use Starlink only in frontline areas.
4. This affects the fighting at the frontline, and is bad for Ukrainians.
5. Elon sucks

There is enough evidence both from Ukraiane's Intelligence and from social media that confirms that Russians are successfully using Starlinks to get internet connection at the frontlines.

Russians use Starlink in their invasion of Ukraine.

https://x.com/DI_Ukraine/status/1756601519028207774?s=20

I am closely monitoring the topic of Starlinks among Russian volunteer groups trying to help their invading army take over more Ukrainian cities.

Here is evidence of two Moscow girls supplying not only advanced commerical UAVs, but Starlinks as well.

t.me/katya_valya_dn…

Given my sources in Ukrainian military, I can confirm that Russian mass usage of Starlinks is unprecedented. It has not happened before.

Why now? I have my theories, but that is an open question I will address in the end of the thread.

Still, such Starlink won't work in like Moscow or Saint-Petersburg, so anywhere in Russia is a big no-no for Elon.

They only work in the limiited range around Ukraine's frontline within Ukraine's territory, including occupied by Russians.

https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1756758674087825879?s=20

How that works? Starlink uses geofencing to limit where the terminal should work. Right now, it's the frontline and ~15 km into occupied territories.

Each time you boot Starlink, it must learn its exact coordinates to link with the satellite to connect.

https://twitter.com/RALee85/status/1756774497586213236

We already experienced negative aspects of it.

In Fall 2022 geofencing was also used, and Ukrainains were advancing too quick in Kharkiv offensive, so SpaceX didn't update their geofencing map in time.

So, Ukrainians just liberated a city and were left with no Starlink comms.

Russians already used Starlinks, by the way.

You know, it's war so sometimes Russians capture Ukrainian equipment as well, including Starlinks.

This has always been resolved swiftly by bricking the terminal via SpaceX support, and Russians were not able to take advantage of it

Starlink is a great product for Ukrainian Forces as it gives us tactical advantage over Russian forces.

Combined with UAVs, Starlink makes the battlefield as transparent as it could be. Ukrainians literally see the whole frontline live in 4K in command center.

This enables Ukrainians to take well-informed decisions and prevents Russians from launching surprise attacks.

Although, if Russians would also use it that way, this would significantly affect Ukraine's ability to counter-attack given the limited resources Ukraine has.

There is a big chance, and I have evidence from my military friends that in some areas of the frontline where Russians use Starlink, internet speed went down enormously.

There are not much Starlink satellites flying over Ukraine, and quite a lot of terminals on the ground. ->

This only means one thing - the bandwith is being distributed among the terminals on the ground, bringing both Ukrainian and Russian terminals to 1Mbps.

This makes Starlink only usable for exchaning text messages, not 4K streaming from UAV.

Potentially one less advantage for🇺🇦

I have seen many posts bullying Elon Musk for this situation.

I don't agree to this. Elon has nothing to do with it. We should bully him for other things - like endorsing the genocide of Ukrainians committed by russian forces, or platforming russian propaganda.

https://x.com/P_Kallioniemi/status/1674360288445964288?s=20

Unfortunately, this is how this piece of technology works.

You can buy it in any country that sells them (e.g. we get ours in Germany as it was the cheapest), then transport it to the frontlines and run it. It'll work.

There is no way SpaceX team will sit there and maintain war map with hundred meters precision to eliminate Russian terminals out of the game.

There is no way also to know whether that is Ukrainian terminal with special forces group, or russian vatniks watching porn in the rear.

Running a registry of Ukraine's Starlinks is also not possible hence there are so many sources for those Starlinks - even I myself got like 500+ to the Ukrainian Army.

You can't account all of them to whitelist, and blacklist the rest.

I suggest launching a psy-op in Russian telegram channels saying that Starlink is a product that spies on your positions and that's why you will get HIMARSed in a few hours after you launch it.

This could at least be fun.

I got hammered with Starlink questions so much, because back in the day I made this thread on Starlinks after Elmo said something stupid (again).

Feel free to read -

https://x.com/dim0kq/status/1580827171903635456?s=20

Answering the question WHY russians started using Starinks just now.

I have my main theory - Russians only now figured out how geofencing works and bought some Starlinks in Poland to test, then got them through Belarus to the frontline. It worked, so they started mass-buying it

Questions to discuss:
Why the hell they started abusing geofencing just now, even though it was obvious they had this opportunity way way back?

What we can do to reduce Starlink's impact on Russian warfare?

Ukraine will win!