In the Game of Drones, Elon Musk Hands a Battle Victory to Ukraine

In a ploy reminiscent of Israel’s exploding pagers, Ukraine’s cyber soldiers radically outfoxed their Russian foes this week. At the urging of Ukraine’s new “tech bro” defense minister, Mykhailo Fedorov, Elon Musk abruptly turned off Russian access to his Starlink internet service.Russian soldiers raged. One front line soldier was filmed kicking his dead internet terminal through the snow. He cursed that he was “back in the Stone Age.” To help out, Ukrainian hacktivists stepped in. They sent out Telegram messages offering distressed Russian soldiers Internet reconnections, for a small fee.“In one week, we received: 2,420 submissions with enemy Starlink details and precise geolocations,” the semi-official Ukrainian 256 Cyber Assault Division reported yesterday on X. In addition to learning the precise locations of almost 2,500 Russian front line positions, the cyber hackers won fringe benefits: the names of 31 Ukrainian traitors willing to sell out their country for a few hundred dollars and “$6,000 in ‘donations’ from Russian troops who were frantically looking for a fix to their comms problem.”This enormous security and communications breach is not expected to yield a Ukrainian military breakthrough. However, it is ruining Russian generals’ chances of delivering to President Vladimir Putin a battlefield trophy in time for the fourth anniversary of his invasion of Ukraine — February 22.“The move effectively stranded far-flung Russian infiltration groups relying on drones for resupply,” American war blogger David Axe wrote Wednesday. “A strong Ukrainian force seized the opportunity to launch local counterattacks. The Ukrainians’ aim isn’t to break through Russian lines, but rather to stabilize their own lines.”Rushing to close the barn door after the cows were gone, Russia this week shut down Telegram and WhatsApp messaging services. This sent Russian soldiers scrambling to work out alternative ways to communicate.“Within a day after Telegram’s slowdown, I received about five videos from anonymous military personnel complaining that they’re completely screwed without Telegram,” popular Russian war blogger Fighterbomber wrote of the messaging app shutdown. It also is having a tremendous impact on Russian society. About 94 million Russians, or two-thirds of the country’s adult population, use Telegram. The government seeks to push Russians to an indigenous messaging system, MAX. Critics say MAX is a surveillance tool.Russians’ heavy dependence on Starlink and Telegram highlights the nation’s reliance on foreign communications technologies. Out of frustration, some Kremlin propagandists urge Russia to attack Starlink satellites in space.“It is important to understand that relying on anything Western in the current situation is dangerously overconfident,” the first deputy chairman of the Duma defense committee, Aleksei A. Zhuravlev, told Gazeta.ru last week. “Even though we’re currently in active negotiations with the U.S., that doesn’t stop them from becoming our adversary — and Musk’s actions clearly demonstrate this.”To move toward communications independence from the West, Russia’s space agency, Roscosmos, had planned to launch 16 low Earth orbit satellites last year. Now, the launches are to be next year. By contrast, Mr. Musk’s SpaceX company powers his global internet system with 9,422 low Earth orbit satellites. Reaching 9 million subscribers, this constellation accounts for two-thirds of all satellites orbiting the globe. Mr. Musk, who is sometimes seen as standoffish about Ukraine, seems to have been swayed by Ukraine’s new defense minister, a 35-year-old IT entrepreneur who dresses Musk-style, in black T-shirts. Mr. Fedorov told the American that thousands of Starlink dishes were smuggled into Russia, largely through Central Asia. Last month, Russian drone operators started affixing them to their Iran-designed Shahed drones, giving the drones high accuracy at long range.The solution was to block all Starlinks operating in eastern Ukraine and western Russia. Legitimate Ukrainian ones have been registered on a “white list,” and turned back on. Without their Starlinks, Russian soldiers are regressing to the year 2000, seeking to make do with Wi-Fi, cable internet, and large, easy to spot, satellite dishes. “What everyone feared for a long time has happened,” wrote a Crimea-based video blogger, Yuriy Podolyaka, with a following of nearly 3 million on Telegram. “Elon Musk flipped the switch…our communications are in chaos.”In a measure of the Russian military’s acute withdrawal pains, Ukraine’s Prisoners of War office reported Tuesday that Russia is pressuring the families of Ukrainian military prisoners of war to register Starlink terminals in their names in Ukraine. A defense ministry drone advisor, Serhii Beskrestnov, wrote on Telegram from Kyiv: “For the enemy, Starlink is so important that they have deployed a whole network to search for traitors who are ready to register Starlink for themselves.” In this deadly technology race between Russia and Ukraine, Ukraine seems to have the upper hand, for now.“Thanks to the first steps taken in recent days, no Ukrainians have been killed by Russian drones using Starlink — and that is priceless,” Mr. Fedorov posted on X after the shutoffs started.In response, Mr. Musk tweeted: “Looks like the steps we took to stop the unauthorized use of Starlink by Russia have worked. Let us know if more needs to be done.”As Russian commanders send engineers up towers to install wireless repeaters, the situation on the ground shifts, Mr. Axe, the American war blogger, wrote Thursday night. “The surprise decision by billionaire Elon Musk’s Starlink company to brick Russia’s stolen and smuggled satellite terminals last week blinded and deafened many Russian headquarters and grounded many Russian drones,” he wrote in his blog, Trench Art. “Around the same time, the Kremlin restricted military use of the Telegram social media platform. The move was supposed to suppress dissent. Instead, it muted troops who had depended on the platform for front-line communications.”The loss of communications, for the moment, is turning the tide against the Russians, he concludes: “They can’t surveil, can’t coordinate, can’t fly all their attack drones. They’re at a disadvantage even if they happen to outnumber local Ukrainian troops. They’re no longer moving forward; instead, they’re moving backward.”

In the Game of Drones, Elon Musk Hands a Battle Victory to Ukraine

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