For any Ukrainians to make use of Starlink, they have to get their hands on one of these Starlink terminals, which are made by SpaceX. (For regular customers, a Starlink kit costs $499, and the service is $99 a month.) SpaceX did not respond to questions about the number of active terminals in Ukraine right now, or how many terminals the company plans to send to the country.
These terminals must be within several hundred miles of ground stations that communicate with Starlink satellites before the satellites beam signals down to those dishes. There are no such stations inside Ukraine, but there are enough in neighboring countries to “provide service to the whole of Ukraine without issues,” Mike Puchol, the chief technology officer at an internet start-up who also runs a tracker of Starlink coverage, told me.
If and when Ukrainians can get connected, there’s also the matter of the service’s quality. Starlink, according to SpaceX’s website, requires a clear view of the sky to maintain a direct line of sight between the terminal and satellites passing overhead. Last spring, when the product was still in its beta-test phase, some users found that trees on the horizon, sometimes even a single tree, could disrupt the signal. Some user reports suggest service has improved since then, but disruptions can still occur. “If a few trees can block your Starlink connection, I’m pretty sure Russia or China or another state actor can,” Weeden said.
Even if Starlink worked perfectly, the use of satellite technology can be risky in wartime, John Scott-Railton, a senior researcher at the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab, told me. Transmissions between ground receivers and satellites can become beacons for air strikes. “None of this is new,” Scott-Railton said. “The only new thing is Starlink, which has never really been tested in a context of battle.”
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