![\"Mykhailo](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/https:\/\/d1e00ek4ebabms.cloudfront.net\/production\/68f6bfa5-0b03-44b6-945e-39b5e78ece09.jpg\")
Ukraine\u2019s defence minister Mykhailo Fedorov said the country was \u2018working very closely\u2019 with Starlink \u00a9 Andrii Nesterenko\/Reuters<\/p>\nStay informed with free updates<\/p>\n
Simply sign up to the War in Ukraine myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox.<\/p>\n
Elon Musk said on Sunday that SpaceX had successfully thwarted the \u201cunauthorised use\u201d by Russia\u2019s military of his company\u2019s Starlink satellite system to attack Ukraine.<\/p>\n
\u201cLooks like the steps we took to stop the unauthorised use of Starlink by Russia have worked,\u201d Musk wrote on X. \u201cLet us know if more needs to be done.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ukrainian defence minister Mykhailo Fedorov replied saying the \u201cfirst steps are already delivering real results\u201d. \u201cWe are working very closely with your team on the next important steps,\u201d he added in a post on Musk\u2019s social media platform.<\/p>\n
Earlier this week, Fedorov said that \u201cwithin a few hours after Russian drones equipped with Starlink communications appeared over Ukrainian cities\u201d his ministry had begun working with SpaceX to stop the weapons from using the US internet system to guide them to targets inside Ukraine.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Ukraine\u2019s defence minister Mykhailo Fedorov said the country was \u2018working very closely\u2019 with Starlink \u00a9 Andrii Nesterenko\/Reuters<\/p>\n
Musk\u2019s assistance comes as the Trump administration pushes for an end to Russia\u2019s invasion of Ukraine<\/a>. The first three-way peace talks between American, Russian and Ukrainian delegations were held a week ago. The negotiations were scheduled to resume on Sunday, but were postponed to February 4 and 5, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said.<\/p>\n Russia has insisted it will not end its war in Ukraine unless Kyiv makes significant territorial concessions, which the US has tied to security guarantees for the country, the FT reported.<\/a> <\/p>\n On Saturday, US special envoy Steve Witkoff held what he called a \u201cproductive and constructive\u201d meeting with Russian special envoy Kirill Dmitriev in Miami. Treasury secretary Scott Bessent, Jared Kushner and White House senior adviser Josh Gruenbaum joined the talks, Witkoff said.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, Russian drones continued to attack Ukraine by the hundreds. But since Thursday they have refrained from attacking energy infrastructure in and around Kyiv, after US President Donald Trump asked Russia\u2019s Vladimir Putin to agree to a week-long ceasefire. <\/p>\n The Kremlin clarified that Putin had agreed to hold fire through Sunday only \u2014 just before temperatures were expected to plummet to about minus 30\u00b0C and with the Ukrainian energy grid still damaged by previous attacks.<\/p>\n Serhiy Beskrestnov, an adviser to Ukraine\u2019s defence minister, last month said he had discovered Starlink dishes in wreckage of hundreds of Russia\u2019s long-range drones that were used in swarms to strike energy infrastructure and residential buildings. The dishes were found atop the drones where they had a direct link to Starlink\u2019s constellation of satellites, allowing them to fly farther and largely unhindered by electronic warfare devices used by Kyiv to bring them down.<\/p>\n Beskrestnov said on Thursday that these were attacks \u201cnot on military targets\u201d but on civilian urban areas, \u201cincluding residential buildings\u201d.<\/p>\n On Saturday, Beskrestnov wrote on Facebook<\/a> that SpaceX\u2019s countermeasures against Russia\u2019s drones were showing results but that they had also impacted the use of Starlink by some of Ukraine\u2019s own military units. He said that a solution was being developed to ensure Ukrainian use would be fully restored.<\/p>\n On Sunday, Fedorov said the \u201cnext step is to implement a system that will allow only authorised terminals to operate on Ukrainian territory\u201d. Instructions for Ukrainian users on how to register Starlink for verification would be shared in \u201cthe coming days\u201d and \u201cunverified terminals will be disconnected\u201d, he added.<\/p>\n Tens of thousands of Starlink terminals are being used by the Ukrainian military and the civilian population alike. The internet system has been crucial for communications and drone operations conducted by the armed forces. But it has also provided a lifeline to frontline communities without telecommunications and to neighbourhoods in Kyiv whose power and WiFi have been knocked out by Russian bombing.<\/p>\n Starlink cannot be sold to or operated inside Russia because of US sanctions on the country over its full-scale war on Ukraine. But Russian forces have found ways around the ban and were first reported to be using Starlink systems in 2024<\/a>. <\/p>\n Recommended<\/p>\n But Ukraine\u2019s heavy reliance on Starlink and concerns over Musk\u2019s past criticism of Kyiv and decisions that interrupted military operations have raised concerns in Europe, where companies are rushing to find viable alternatives<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n Concerns were first raised in October 2022, after the FT reported that Ukrainian troops had suffered outages<\/a> of their Starlink communication devices on the frontline, hindering operations to liberate territory from Russian forces. Musk has said<\/a> that \u201cStarlink is meant for peaceful use only\u201d.<\/p>\n Fedorov noted that the tech billionaire\u2019s \u201cdecision to urgently activate Starlink and send the first batch of terminals to Ukraine at the start of the full-scale invasion was critically important for the resilience of our state\u201d.<\/p>\n He called Musk \u201ca true champion of freedom and a true friend of the Ukrainian people\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Stay informed with free updates Simply sign up to the War in Ukraine myFT Digest — delivered directly…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":263179,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[111,139,69,147,392],"class_list":["post-263178","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-science","tag-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263178","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=263178"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263178\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/263179"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=263178"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=263178"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=263178"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Residents](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/https:\/\/d1e00ek4ebabms.cloudfront.net\/production\/ad90ad2f-ec82-4593-bc4f-f1c1f28d11d3.jpg\")
The aftermath of a Russian drone and missile strike in Zaporizhzhia \u00a9 Serhii Chalyi\/Reuters<\/p>\n![\"An](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/https:\/\/images.ft.com\/v3\/image\/raw\/https%3A%2F%2Fd1e00ek4ebabms.cloudfront.net%2Fproduction%2F230c0c.jpeg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n