A report that Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, has been in regular contact over the past few years with President Vladimir Putin will not come as much of a surprise to officials in Ukraine—or to the frontline troops fighting a brutal war of attrition with Russian forces.
In the few months after Putin’s illegal full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the South African-born billionaire was hailed a hero by the country’s defenders as they used Musk’s Starlink satellite terminals to coordinate their military operations. Freely provided by Musk in a gesture of solidarity, the terminals gave Ukrainians a crucial battleground edge against the numerically superior Russian forces.
Since then, however, relations between Musk and Ukrainian leaders have deteriorated significantly. The Wall Street Journal report on the regular contact between Musk and the Kremlin—the newspaper says Putin even asked Musk not to activate Starlink over Taiwan as a favor to China’s Xi Jinping—will only confirm suspicions in Ukraine that, if not yet a full-blown Russian asset, Musk is becoming a Russian ally.
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And Starlink is the key. The portable satellite terminals, allowing reliable and secure internet access, remain the backbone of Ukraine’s frontline communications—although the bill is now picked up by the Pentagon rather than Starlink, a subsidiary of Musk’s SpaceX. Increasingly, however, the Russians are using them too. Ukrainian officials say Russian forces are deploying thousands of the terminals in captured Ukrainian territory, closing the technology gap and enabling their grindingly slow and brutal offensive in the Donetsk region.
Because of international sanctions, Starlink cannot sell its hardware in Russia and its satellite do not cover Russian territory. But the Russians appear to have a reliable supply of smuggled Starlink terminals through a third country, which its forces can then use in Ukraine.
In a worrying twist, the Ukrainian outlet Defense Express reported last month that a Shahed 136 drone downed over Ukraine carried components that would allow it to connect to Starlink.
Adding Starlink to Russian drones is a modification that could make things more challenging for Ukraine, especially after Musk personally intervened to forbid the use of Starlink in Ukrainian attack drones. If the Iranian-designed Shaheds, now built at scale in Russia itself, can reliably transmit information back to Russian commanders, they can collect information about the areas they fly over or receive instructions over long distances. A Shahed with Starlink could change targets in the air or potentially act as reconnaissance platforms depending on the modifications.
Despite a high rate of Shahed interceptions, adding Starlink is the latest example of how Russia has doubled down on the Shahed, a kind of one-way attack (OWA) drone that can strike targets hundreds of miles into Ukraine. Some recovered Shaheds were found to have been sprayed with carbon to make them slightly harder for Ukraine to detect them using radar. Other downed Shaheds been found with webcams and Ukrainian SIM cards to transmit information back to the operators. They Russians have also reportedly started to build cheaper drone decoys that can be mass-produced but are just as troublesome, and expensive, for Ukraine’s defenders to shoot down.
How Starlink, and Musk himself, will respond to the increased Russian use of the Starlink platform, is an open question. If the company can determine when Ukrainian drones use Starlink, they may be able to track when Russia is using them the same way. Russia has a few known launch areas for Shaheds, so if there’s a Starlink connection from launch then they could presumably monitor those areas and cut access before the drone reaches its target. However, Starlink might not prioritize stopping Russian access to its services in real time, which would make it difficult for them to locate and shut off the drones’ connections before they reach their destination or start transmitting or receiving valuable information from their operators.
SpaceX/Starlink did not respond to The Daily Beast’s request for comment.
While Russia illicitly using Starlink in communications networks and drones is an alarming sign that they can access American technology to make their drones better, they might not become commonplace. Russian forces on the ground are in desperate need of stable communications and the military might prioritize giving them Starlink access over putting the hardware in a drone that will more than likely be shot down after a single use. Even if Starlink is put in some Shahed variants, it’s unlikely that every single one of the dozens of drones launched per month would have it. Even so, Russia’s use of Starlink to coordinate its forces and drones create new worries for Ukraine and SpaceX alike.
