How Starlink slowdown hit Ukraine’s front line soldiers pushing Russia back

The drone unit he leads has been helping push back Russian troops on the front lines in southeastern Ukraine. Then, late last Tuesday, a drone launched toward Russian troops suddenly lost connection.

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“As it was picking up speed, contact with the drone was lost in an instant,” according to the commander, 47, who is serving on the border between the eastern Donetsk and southern Zaporizhzhia regions, and only wanted to be identified by his call sign Flint due to the sensitivity of his service.

The drone fell to the ground, aborting the mission, Flint said in a series of messages on WhatsApp. He fears the technology inside “may have fallen into enemy hands.”

“Only after analyzing the flight, it became clear that the issue was specifically related to the Starlink speed limit,” he added.

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Ukraine said last week that limits were imposed without warning on its use of Starshield, the military variant of the Starlink internet service run by Elon Musk’s SpaceX, affecting battlefield missions reliant on it.

President Donald Trump said Thursday that Musk had restored the service in Ukraine, but Kyiv said Friday that it was not seeing any lifting of restrictions. Trump did not say why the limits were in place, though Musk had previously said that “any limits on speed or usage are decided by the U.S. military and ultimately POTUS.” Ukraine had also warned of gaps in intelligence sharing from the U.S., something the White House has denied.

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