Since Russia is gaining quite a lot, the terminals could be captured equipment.

The Russian gains have been minimal, and I'm not sure that Starlink would be used right on the frontline, but a little way behind for longer range communication. Plus, when the Ukrainians do retreat, it seems to be in good order following a mobile defense doctrine. So I think it's far more likely to be the Russians using terminals they've imported through sanction busting methods.

Talking of mobile defense, the Ukrainians find themselves in a similar position to the Germans after Barbarossa and Case Blue failed. Generally superior equipment and training, but severely outnumbered. It was Hitler's insistence on holding ground at any cost that caused Stalingrad and later on the collapse of Army Group Centre. Hoping the Ukrainians can learn from that, and be more pragmatic - although the Bakhmut and now Avdiivka defense suggests otherwise.

It seems obvious to me that Russia wouldn't use Starlink because they don't need to and because they can't trust a US corporation with their battlefield comms.

But by sowing the seeds of doubt, they hope to persuade Starlink or the US government to limit its use in the conflict. Congress are already blocking $600m of aid to Ukraine, the Shouty Orange Moron who likes Putin is on course to be the next US president, so Russia are helpfully giving a hint that because they've destroyed so much Ukrainian civil infrastructure, then just by restricting Starlink, Zehlinsky will be pressured to accept a peace deal.

Russian army is not of a single entity. It's even possible that officially Starlink is prohibited there. However soldiers in the field use whatever gets job done. Communications has always been Achilles' heel of Russians. We've seen them using open radio communications since 2014. Search Internet for collections of Russian radio exchanges when they stood under Kyiv. Back then this was a professional and well-equipped by Russian standards army, not a dangerous mob of hobos we see now. When compared with open radio communications or even no connection at all Starlink is a definite improvement. As far as I know Starlink kit is provided to Russian army by their volunteer efforts and not through official channels.

It's just not possible to have completely watertight sanctions, so I'm sure if Russia wants to use Starlink terminals they'll be able to get them in limited numbers.

I am wondering though, if the firmware can be modified such that only terminals supplied directly to Ukraine would work in that geographic area, and all others blocked.

Some kind of cryptographic handshake that uniquely identifies each terminal and can't be easily spoofed by the Russians. I'm sure there's already the basis for this in the existing firmware, since it's a subscription service. Sure, they will most likely crack it eventually, so have regular updates that at least keeps them secure most of the time.

The issue is that many of the terminals used legitimately by Ukrainians are donated so there isn't one easy to tap into register.

Probably, a better way to have handled this would have been to talk to Starlink quietly so that a plan can be worked out without telegraphing to Russia that the jig is up. Equally, they may have tried this and are unhappy with the pace so are using publicity to pressure.

Using a geographic blackout is difficult too because it may cause units near the front line to stop working, so it would probably help for Ukrainian planners to work out the optimum strategy for their advantage.

Hadn't considered the donation of terminals. Taking of "quiet words", I wonder if the Pentagon had some of those with Musk after he switched off the Ukrainian's access to Starlink a while back.

Has that since been confirmed? The last time I read about that story on a fact checking website (Snopes), it was claimed that Starlink was never operating in Crimea (the area where it is alleged to have been deactivated, not across Ukraine, in any of the sources I've read) due to US sanctions. Supposedly, Musk received a last minute request to enable it in Crimea and balked. This clarification too may be out of date as well.

"...it was claimed that Starlink was never operating in Crimea ..."

The headline [1]"Elon Musk sabotaged Ukrainian attack on Russian fleet in Crimea by turning off Starlink" suggests by its wording that Starlink was indeed active in the region until Musk ordered it to be turned off.

The article says...

"Musk on Thursday evening painted a slightly different picture to the one described by Isaacson. He said satellites in those regions were never turned on in the first place and he simply chose not to activate them."

however...

After speaking to the Russian ambassador to the United States — who reportedly told him an attack on Crimea would trigger a nuclear response — Musk took matters into his own hands and ordered his engineers to turn off Starlink coverage “within 100 kilometers of the Crimean coast.””

[1] https://www.politico.eu/article/elon-musk-ukraine-starlink-russia-crimea-war-drone-submarine-attack-sabotage/

Thanks, I did think it was a case of he said/he said but, going back to the Snopes article, the original author of the book quoted there did clarify

https://www.snopes.com/news/2023/09/14/musk-internet-access-crimea-ukraine/

"To clarify on the Starlink issue: the Ukrainians THOUGHT coverage was enabled all the way to Crimea, but it was not. They asked Musk to enable it for their drone sub attack on the Russian fleet. Musk did not enable it, because he thought, probably correctly, that would cause a major war."

In either case, it seems like Musk should have taken direction from the Pentagon (I imagine they have a 24 hour support number). I expect the Pentagon would have said" if you don't let us use Starlink, we'll let us use Starlink" and may well have said this later on.

I think the switch off claim was given credence by the Medvedev quote. This may have been a mistranslation or a Russian attempt at misinformation.

Musk regularly tries to revise the history of events, or put his spin on reality (like how Tesla recalls aren't actually recalls).

My money's on him being the source of the disinformation, rather than the Russians for once.

Snopes is great and all, but it's not the only source I look at when I try to figure out if something's true or not.

Sorry, I probably didn't word that correctly. The person who made the claim in your cited article (Isaacson) issued the above quoted correction, not Musk. I agree on reading around but I think that someone correcting themselves is pretty conclusive in the absence of further corrections (and signs of being beaten).

Isaacson's " [1]clarification ":

"To clarify on the Starlink issue: the Ukrainians THOUGHT coverage was enabled all the way to Crimea, but it was not."

contradicts what he wrote in his book:

"Throughout the evening and into the night, he personally took charge of the situation. Allowing the use of Starlink for the attack, he concluded, could be a disaster for the world. So he secretly told his engineers to turn off coverage within 100 kilometers of the Crimean coast. As a result, when the Ukrainian drone subs got near the Russian fleet in Sevastopol, they lost connectivity and washed ashore harmlessly."

Now if Isaacson lost his mind or had an alternative recollection to what happened in reality, don't you think it's strange that the book mentions the oddly specific distance of 100km from the shore...if in fact the coverage wasn't there at all as Isaacson later claimed on Twitter? I don't believe a biographer would just invent such a random fact to fill out a paragraph in a book. I also don't believe the Ukrainian military would've sent out drones on the mere *THOUGHT* that they'd have coverage. Do you?

Anyway the book is still for sale with that same text, so I'd have my doubts that the "clarification" is real, and not the result of Musk's leaning on Isaacson to change the narrative because he realised version of events in the book made him look bad.

Like I said already: Musk is no stranger to revisionism.

Like you said already: he said/she said.

[1] https://i.redd.it/walter-isaacson-contradicts-himself-to-help-musk-v0-y1y37ubrh8nb1.jpg?s=5ad6874d8041c6944e6d6aed3e28e1b1cc24d328

That sounds like quite a reach, bordering on mental gymnastics. Good journalists publish retractions, corrections and clarifications. Provided they're not doing it due to past carelessness, that's part of what makes for a good journalist. The fact that Isaacson had more to gain by going with the juicier narrative than correcting himself makes me think he is a good journalist.

Given Musk's thin skin and poor impulse control, I would expect that if he had flying monkeys (simian or solicitous) which were that effective, he would have been able to do things like stopping the tracking of his private jet without resorting to the obviously childish banning of the Twitter account. One could equally say that the use of a simple clarification rather than pulling the book from the shelves for editing shows that Isaacson wasn't under significant duress but I'd say that, either way, it's not really a great piece of evidence.

Regarding the 100km, I wouldn't ascribe that as indicative of accuracy, it's a nice round number for describing how a sanction-compliant coverage blackout would also extend into the sea. Regarding the Ukrainian forces sending drones on the thought , "we don't know what we don't know" is a common military issue that's never been satisfactorily addressed and creates issues to this day. Case in point: the materiel failures Russia is experiencing.

I never disagreed with Musk being a revisionist but it seems like you're trying to be a little revisionist yourself by placing weight on one quote from a journalist while simultaneously dismissing a direct clarification from him. There's plenty of reasons to criticise Musk; indeed, there's plenty of reasons to criticise Musk over the reality of this event, I just think it's poor form to try to push a narrative that meets with your preconceptions.

So the Russian ambassador to the US discussed the Russian military's nuclear strategy with Musk?

As in all war, and on all sides, there is propaganda, deliberate misinformation and a small sliver of truth ...

Unfortunately, since [1]half of all active satellites are now owned by Musk, I do wonder how much of the shots the Pentagon actually call at this stage.

[1] https://www.sciencenews.org/article/satellites-spacex-problem-space-pollution

Quite a lot, actually. When the US Government is your major customer and entirely incidentally the regulatory agency covering inauguration and operation of your product, you do want to walk a fine line between doing what they ask and adhering to whatever principles you may have picked up over the past couple of days doomscrolling your ego-stroking toy...

(And rockets are controlled items, so Musk couldn't take his toys from the US to a different jurisdiction even if he wanted to, and he probably doesn't because approximately 100% of operational SpaceX launches use US government assets -- the Eastern and Western ranges, to name but two...)

"To the best of our knowledge," Musk said, "no Starlinks have been sold directly or indirectly to Russia."

If wannabe Tony Stark denies it, that means Russia's got Starlink.

Quite an upgrade from the $30 Baofeng radios the Russians are accustomed to using...

Note carefully that no mention was made of no Starlink terminals being given to Russia.

From what I can read elsewhere, the alleged terminals may have allegedly been sourced in Dubai. Allegedly.

"To the best of our knowledge"

If a Starlink is working, someone's paying the subscription for it. It obviously won't be Russia because of sanctions but any other country could be paying the bill and the device itself could be used by Russian forces in occupied Ukraine.

Unless SpaceX is disabling every Starlink inside Ukraine which is not registered as being used by Ukrainian and allied forces, it could be argued he's not doing enough to comply with sanctions.

Musk, the best of your knowledge is not anything I would trust a fig leaf to.

"If some terminals are being used, passing on their details to Starlink should trigger an investigation and possible deactivation. "

By the time the Ukrainians have the details, I suspect the terminals are either non-functional or safely out of Russia's hands.

It might be worth investigating to identify the straw purchasers and deactivate others they might have purchased.

Would the Russian military really use star link for anything military related? When I think about it like that this all seems a bit silly really.

Dear Anonymous, you have no idea. Communications has always been Achilles' heel of Russians. We've seen them using open radio communications since 2014. Search Internet for collections of Russian radio exchanges when they stood under Kyiv. Back then this was a professional and well-equipped by Russian standards army, not a dangerous mob of hobos we see now. When compared with open radio communications or even no connection at all Starlink is a definite improvement.

This the same Russia that's hacking western power infrastructure and every sovereign nation on the planet? I'm a bit confused here.

It seems a bit naïve to believe that a military superpower is using open radio communications. How do you know they weren't open for a reason? How do you even know the radio exchanges are real? Was any advantage ever gained from them? Clearly not given the situation.

It seems to me it suits the west to label them incompetent to push a narrative and label them competent to push another narrative. Both narratives can't be true. I really will never understand why people swallow propaganda without question or reasoning.

Mostly because huge swathes of equipped troops were being reported routinely and rather quickly shelled into oblivion for absolute schoolboy comms errors. Misdirection is all well and good, but it has to actually achieve something on the battlefield other than broadcasting your presence.

Reported by who? Ukraine? Who have a clear reason for spreading propaganda to demoralise the enemy and make them look bad back home. If two countries are at war it is best to take anything either side says with a huge pinch of salt. We have no evidence of Russian losses. In fact for huge parts of the war Ukraine refused journalists access to the front line. Nearly all reporting has been whatever Ukraine says.

As for achievements on the battlefield all I am seeing is a Russian win. They said at the start what they were going to do and the land they were going to take and they took it. Now they have set up defensive positions and Ukraine can't do anything. These are facts whether we like them or not and saying otherwise is just trying to fool yourself.

I try to take an unbiased view on things and I am not swayed by multiple stories without evidence other than witness statements. I still have huge doubts that at the beginning of the conflict Russia sent a loads of tanks completely unprotected up a main road to Kiev on what is a suicide mission.

Rumor has it that there are countries with air and space-borne assets that listen to things happening on the ground. Those countries might choose not to comment on things they know because they'd rather know the things than have the peeps on the ground know they know the things.

"It seems a bit naïve to believe that a military superpower is using open radio communications."

1. Corruption. Some oligarch wins a contract to provide secure radios to the RU military. Instead the military gets basic Baofeng radios in a fancy shell case.

2. Stupidity. Ukrainian SBU monitors the phone calls the RU soldiers make on their personal phones.

3. Not just open radio comms. They use field telephones joined by cable just like it's WWI again.

"Superpower" is overstating things a bit. They just have a lot of cannonfodder.

All starlink activity in the region is passed through a Ukrainian intelligence office before (or in parallel to) hitting the internet.

Russia using starlink? Well Ukraine now know what you're doing over it.

OK, they might be smart enough to use encryption but it could at least identify communications endpoints and might be useful for identifying kit in Russian hands.

Who is "they"? The Soviet (sorry, Russian) conscripts who appear ill-equipped and poorly trained? I agree, there's grave doubt operational commands from Comrade Colonel Boss are passed through Starlink, but I have zero doubt that emails and the Chinese WeChat messages and video calls home to mom do...

Starlink terminals are basically large 4G mobile WiFi devices, in the sense they are extremely portable devices that are trivial to obtain for less than £1000.

They literally do not work in Russia. Although it may be a grey area where the border ends and coverage starts.

Curiously, there is a Wikipedia map of Starlink coverage in Ukraine which claims that only areas under clear Ukrainian control are covered, even showing a map of the exact coverage provided. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starlink_in_the_Russo-Ukrainian_War

Perhaps it is possible the Russians have claimed some units from fallen Ukrainian positions - and are using Starlink within Ukraine? It seems the most plausible scenario.