All of those progressives who hate Tesla and X now but who still have Ukrainian flags displayed on their Bluesky accounts should probably be thanking one person for slowing Russia’s advances on the battlefield: Elon Musk. Musk is responsible for a significant decrease in the number and precision of Russian attacks on Ukrainian forces over the past month. He did it by flicking a switch and turning off Russia’s access to Starlink.
The backstory here is pretty well known. One of the first things Russia targeted in the war was Ukraine’s communications infrastructure. That should have left Ukraine’s military relying on walkie-talkies and cell phones but it didn’t thanks to the introduction of Starlink terminals into the conflict. Over time, Starlink became the backbone of Ukraine’s defense strategy.
Meanwhile, Russia decided it wanted to get in on the action and by 2024 it was also using Starlink terminals which it had bought and activated abroad and then transferred to the battlefield. Eventually, Russia was putting the terminals on individual drones to make them able to transmit video in real time and better guide them toward targets.
Ukraine’s defense minister, Mykhailo Fedorov, appealed directly to Elon Musk and asked him to turn off Russia’s access to the satellites and at the beginning of February Musk did exactly that. Ukraine was able to re-certify their Starlink panels using a whitelist maintained by the Ukrainian Defense Ministry, but Russia’s panels were down. The results of this one change were dramatic.
“The Russians… lost their ability to control the field,” a Ukrainian drone operator who goes by the callsign Giovanni told us.
“I think they lost 50% of their capacity for offence,” he said. “That’s what the numbers show. Fewer assaults, fewer enemy drones, fewer everything.”
…in some areas of the long front line, especially east of the city of Zaporizhzhia, there is some evidence of Russian forces being forced to retreat.
In fact, communication intercepts indicate that Russian soldiers were panicking as their connectivity went down.
“All we’ve got left now,” the Russian soldier said, “are radios, cables and pigeons.”…
“Damn it! Looks like they’ve switched off all the Starlinks,” one Russian soldier exclaimed. “The connection is gone, completely gone. The images aren’t being transmitted,” another shouted…
“That’s it, basically no one has internet at all,” a Russian soldier said in one of the messages played for Axel Springer reporters. “Everything’s off, everything’s off.”
Ukraine took things a step further and capitalized on the panic.
Ukrainian online activists from volunteer group InformNapalm decided to exploit the situation, launching a successful phishing operation that persuaded Russian soldiers to reveal details of their Starlink terminals.
“When people started messaging us, we directed them to closed group chats,” says Mykhailo Makaruk, spokesman for InformNapalm. “We wanted to show that it was top secret.”
Makaruk says his group successfully identified 2,425 Starlink terminals, from the Crimean peninsula in the south to the city of Gomel in eastern Belarus.
Believing they were on a fast track to having their terminals reconnected, some soldiers were even tricked into making online payments totalling $5,000.
Once the locations of the terminals close to the front lines had been established, many were targeted by Ukrainian artillery and drones.
Having lost their primary means of communication, Russia is now scrambling to set up alternative means. But there are downsides to these alternatives.
Russia has placed particular emphasis on Wi-Fi “bridge” networks that require elevation and direct radio line-of-sight.
Building towers and other above-ground communications nodes creates obvious, high-value targets.
Destroying them can disrupt or break data links along the sector of the line, which makes them clear markers for Ukrainian drone crews to spot and strike, Beskrestnov concluded.
In fact, there are now multiple videos showing small Ukrainian drones targeting individual soldiers who’ve been sent up the towers to establish the new networks. Unfortunately for these guys, they’ve been sent 100 feet or more in the air and have nowhere to go.
Musk flipped a switch. Now Russia is sending men up towers to die.
Ukraine asked Elon Musk to cut off Russia’s unauthorized Starlink terminals. He did. And now Russian technicians are climbing towers to rig makeshift relay stations — showing up in drone compilation videos as easy… pic.twitter.com/smOZDZrwZY— jasonbellini (@jasonbellini) February 20, 2026
It’s difficult to guess what this will mean longer term. For the moment it has reduced the number and precision of Russian attacks. Russia may be able to compensate but it has nothing to replace Starlink. Musk’s company has nearly 10,000 satellites in low-earth orbit. That represents something like 2/3 of all the active satellites in orbit. No one else has the rockets (Space X) to launch anything comparable anytime soon. Even if they got that ability today, it would take years to catch up.
Again, anyone who is hoping to see Ukraine hold out against the Russian war machine should be thanking the person who made this possible. Instead, progressives have made him the second most hated man in America.
Editor’s Note: With President Trump back in the White House, the state of our Union is strong once again.
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