Starlink provides Ukraine with satellite Internet

In an effort to bring the country’s communications to a standstill, Russia presumably also shut down the country’s satellite network when it began its war of aggression in Ukraine. But help is coming from Starlink CEO Elon Musk. Without further ado, the tech billionaire is making his satellite Internet available to Ukraine and putting the necessary satellites in place.

European satellites come to a standstill

Russia’s attack on Ukraine has led to a significant rallying of the West. But it is not just individual populations and politicians who are standing by Russia’s neighbor. Companies also get behind Ukraine and try to support it with all their might. This is also the case with Starlink. The service for satellite Internet has unceremoniously compensated for the failure of the KA-SAT satellite network. Our colleagues at Golem.de have received an e-mail from the operator Viasat. From this the extent of the failure emerges:

“This seems to have started first with the KA-SAT service in Ukraine and then spread over almost the entire KA-SAT footprint”

Suspected attack by Russia

It can hardly be a coincidence that the communications system came to a halt just as Russian troops were invading Ukraine. Viasat itself seems to be currently investigating the masterminds behind the attack on the satellite network. Thus, the e-mail in question continues to say that the defect in the system was

“related to a suspicious event that started at 4am UTC (Universal Time) on February 24. We continue to analyze our systems to identify the root cause and are taking additional network and security precautions to prevent further impact.”

The thesis of the attack by Russia is quite clearly underlined by the fact that other satellite services of Europe have also come to a standstill. For example, the German service ISP Eusanet has also reported significant problems with its network. In a statement, the company commented, saying:

“As things stand, it is unfortunately to be expected that the service cannot be restored before next week”

ISP Eusanet is also already pretty sure about the origin of the failure of its own satellites. Despite the lack of information, a spokesman commented as follows:

“we can say that the outage started around the same time Russia invaded Ukraine.”

The Power of Tech Companies

Our digitized world ensures that companies now have the power of states. An example of this is certainly Elon Musk with his web of Tesla, Starlink and Co. The Digital Minister of Ukraine, Mychajlo Fedorov, is obviously also aware of this. Without further ado, he asked the tech billionaire for support in the event of a satellite network failure. It also became clear that this kind of assistance is far less complicated than a request for help from another country. There was no personal meeting between the high-ranking politician and Musk. Instead, the request took place on the short message service Twitter. Elon Musk promptly assured Ukraine of help:

“Starlink service is now active in Ukraine. More access terminals are on the way.”

Receiving equipment has been delivered

After it was initially unclear whether Ukraine would be able to do anything at all with Starlink’s satellite signal, a welcome shipment arrived in Ukraine on the night of February 28 to March 1. It contained the appropriate counterparts to the satellite signal in the form of receiving equipment. Now, using the satellite Internet should no longer be a problem. Fedorov expressed his gratitude for Starlink’s help on Twitter. The company itself, in turn, was extremely modest, responding only with.