Zelenskyy is Ukraine and Russia to hold separate talks
Another peace negotiation will arise as Russia continues to intensify its long-range attacks on Ukraine.
Euronows
Kyiv, July 25 (Reuters) – The Starlink system used by Ukrainian military forces is part of a global issue that has disrupted satellite internet providers, said the senior commander.
Ukrainian troops have relied heavily on thousands of SpaceX Starlink terminals for battlefield communication and some drone operations, as they have proven resistant to spying and signal jamming through three and a half years of battle with Russian invasions.
Starlink experienced one of the biggest international outages on Thursday when an internal software failure knocked tens of thousands of users offline.
“Starlinks are down across the front,” Ukrainian drone force commander Robert Blovdi wrote in the telegram Thursday at 10:41pm (1941 GMT).
He later updated his post and said the issue had been resolved by 1:05am on Friday. He said he highlighted the risk that the incident will depend on the system and called for diversification of methods of communication and connection.
“The combat missions were carried out without a (video) feed, and the battlefield reconnaissance took place on strike (drone),” writes Blovdi.
Oleksandr Dmitrievi, founder of Ochi, a Ukrainian system that concentrates feeds from thousands of drone crews across the frontline, has shown to Reuters that the outage relies on cloud services to command units, indicating that drone reconnaissance on the battlefield is a “big risk.”
“If we lose our internet connection…the ability to carry out combat operations is virtually gone,” he said, calling for a move towards a local communications system that is not dependent on the internet.
Although Starlink is not active in Russia, Ukrainian officials say Moscow’s military is also using Ukrainian frontline systems widely.
(Reporting by Max Hunderediting by Frances Kerry)
