Thread by @ChrisO_wiki

1/ Russian sources are reporting a mass deactivation of Starlink terminals along the length of the front line in Ukraine. They speculate that it has been ordered by Elon Musk and/or Donald Trump. It's not clear whether the Ukrainians are also affected. ⬇️

2/ Russian warblogger Roman Saponikov writes: "By the way, an interesting fact. Considering that today about 10% of all Starlink terminals were blocked across the entire front (that's a lot)."

3/ Tatiana Kruglova reports:

"There was a mass blocking of Starlinks.

Those who could, activated new dishes today.

Those who couldn't, delivered new terminals for tomorrow.

And now fuck you Elon Musk with such jokes.

I feel like tomorrow will be a 'fun' day."

4/ 'Designer's Dead End' says:

"Our boy Donald Trump has requested our boy Ilya Maskov [sic] to block Starlinks in the combat zone.

We are investigating the situation, as many dishes have been blocked at once, but not all."

5/ Starlink is used widely by the Ukrainian military, which acquired it with funding provided by the Biden administration (it's not clear whether Trump will continue this). The Russians have also acquired Starlink terminals on the black market through third countries.

6/ As Saponkov points out, the Russian site Panorama posted a story (labelled as satire) two weeks ago which claimed:

"US President Donald Trump signed an executive order banning the use of American communications systems in areas where active hostilities are underway.

7/ "In practice, this means the cessation of operation of all Starlink systems on both the Ukrainian and Russian sides.

Elon Musk, in turn, wrote on the X social network that everything had been prepared in advance and the systems would be turned off within 24 hours.

8/ "Such a decision, according to him, will contribute to the rapid onset of peace.

9/ “The lack of Starlink communications will significantly weaken the ability of both sides to conduct military operations and push them towards peace negotiations - this is what we are achieving together with President Trump and the sensible part of humanity,” he announced."

10/ There's no evidence that Trump has signed such an order and Musk hasn't posted anything like that, but the Russians speculate that an attempt to degrade both sides' communications has in fact happened. However, there are no reports yet that Ukraine's access has been degraded.

11/ A possible alternative scenario is that Starlink has been able to identify the black market terminals acquired by the Russians and has been able to deactivate a significant number of them remotely, without affecting the Ukrainian side. /end

Sources:
🔹t.me/tupi4okDezigne…
🔹t.me/RSaponkov/10355
🔹t.me/misstanita/1486
🔹panorama-pub.turbopages.org/panorama.pub/s…