on March 29, Ukrainian troops rolled into the ruined streets of Irpin, northwest of Kiev, strewn with blackened wreckage and corpses. The destruction had left all 24 of the city’s cell towers offline, leaving traumatized survivors unable to let their friends and relatives know they were safe. “Most of those base stations were significantly destroyed,” said Kostyantyn Naumenko, head of radio access network planning and development at Vodafone Ukraine mobile network. Just two days later, with help from Elon Musk, the city was back online.
Irpin was reconnected on March 31 after technicians from Vodafone Ukraine arrived with a round white satellite antenna known by the manufacturer as Dishy McFlatface – a terminal for the Starlink satellite internet service offered by Musk’s SpaceX. The engineers mounted the receiver and motorized base on a mobile base station on the outskirts of Irpin, whose fiber optic connection and power supply had been cut, and hooked up a generator. Within hours, the city was back online, as were the other residents. “The first thing they do is call relatives to say they are safe and well,” Naumenko says.
The speed with which Irpin was brought back online shows the ingenuity of the engineers involved and the dexterity with which the Ukrainian government has used Starlink terminals. The country has received more than 10,000 of the devices since Russia invaded, in part thanks to funding and other assistance from the US government. The terminals have already become central to the country’s response to the war and find both civilian and military uses.
Thanks to Vodafone Ukraine
The rapid, widespread rollout of Starlink in Ukraine was also an unplanned experiment in the potential geopolitical power of next-generation satellite Internet services. If SpaceX or similar providers are willing, high-speed internet from the sky can be a powerful way to provide connectivity to people or populations suffering the rigors of war or authoritarian governments. “In Ukraine, you could see right away that Starlink and other constellations mean you have the ability to have a resilient system protected from traditional ground attack or control,” said Rose Croshier, a policy officer at the Center for Global Development, a researcher. think tank headquartered in Washington, DC. SpaceX did not respond to questions about its work in Ukraine or offering Starlink in other conflict zones or places where internet access is restricted.
SpaceX has launched more than 2,000 Starlink satellites since 2019 and provides internet services to much of Europe, parts of Central and South America, New Zealand and South Australia. It is the most mature of three projects, including one from Amazon, creating a new generation of high-speed Internet services using swarms of small satellites in low Earth orbit.
But it wasn’t the war that brought Starlink to Ukraine — it was the service’s potential to improve connectivity in a country with vast rural areas. Ukraine’s Ministry of Digital Transformation first made contact with SpaceX a few months before the war started, said departmental adviser Anton Melnyk. Starlink executives spoke to Ukraine’s Minister of Digital Affairs, Mykhailo Fedorov, about activating the service at the end of February. Days later, Russia invaded and Musk’s service became attractive for another reason.
Two days after the invasion of Russia, Fedorov tweeted a request for Starlink terminals at Musk† Ten hours later, SpaceX’s CEO confirmed that Starlink’s service was “active” in Ukraine. Just two days later, on February 28, Fedorov posted photos of a truck stacked high with Starlink boxes and himself unwrapping a Dishy.
