Nikita Shenderovsky13:17, 02/10/24
Moscow can use the systems to bypass the company’s restrictions.
Russian troops can indeed use Starlink systems at the front, reports the American military portal Defense One .
The Ukrainian side first discovered Starlink systems in Russian troops “several months ago,” the portal writes with reference to the Ukrainian military. Since then, Russia’s use of satellite systems at the front has only increased.
“When there are hundreds of them, it will be difficult for us to live,” said one of the Ukrainian soldiers.
The Russian Federation purchases systems through third countries, the military is convinced. “I’m amazed they didn’t do this sooner,” one said.
“Russia’s use of Starlink exacerbates the problems facing the Ukrainian military, which is already short of ammunition. Ukrainian artillery units, for example, fire about 2,000 shells a day,” the journalists write.
The company itself recently announced that it does not do business in the Russian Federation and the work of Starlink on Russian territory is simply blocked. However, Moscow can at least use these systems on Ukrainian territory, said Brian Clark, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute.
“Russia could simply provide a false GPS signal to the Starlink terminal to make it think the user is in Ukrainian-controlled territory,” Clark said.
The publication also notes that several Russian companies are already selling Starlinks in the Russian Federation for military and civilian needs.
Starlink at the front
The first Starlink terminals appeared in Ukraine on February 26, 2022. Then, Elon Musk’s SpaceX provided Ukraine with access to them.
However, just six months later, in September 2022, SpaceX turned to the Pentagon with a request to finance the future operation of terminals in Ukraine. The billionaire explained this by saying that the company must spend money not only on ensuring uninterrupted communications, but also on cyber protection from Russian hackers who are constantly trying to hack the system.
Subsequently, Elon Musk said that he was very afraid of “escalation of the conflict . ” This, in his opinion, could lead to the outbreak of the Third World War, which could lead to the use of nuclear weapons.
Against this backdrop, last fall CNN reported that Elon Musk allegedly ordered the shutdown of Starlink to thwart the Ukrainian attack on Crimea.
The other day, the Ukrainian military wrote on the social network X that the Russian Federation began using Starlink systems at the front. According to their information, the Kremlin has used Starlink in war before, but these were isolated cases. Now it has become widespread.
(C)UNIAN 2024
Elon Musk can not put it out on the Russian side? No. they pay good!
With a president who is at the second stage of Alzheimer (sorry, no joke) things are becoming worse………………………
He makes Angela Merkle look like a young agile Helmut Kohl.
Don’t believe it. It was a political hit job by a Republican.
Special Counsel Robert Hur began his report, “We conclude that no criminal charges are warranted in this matter. We would reach the same conclusion even if Department of Justice policy did not foreclose criminal charges against a sitting president.”
That’s really all that needed to be said. The Department of Justice closed a similar case against former Vice President Mike Pence with a brief, one-page letter. But Hur continued on with 300 pages of commentary.
As television host and former Republican representative from Florida Joe Scarborough put it: “He couldn’t indict Biden legally so he tried to indict Biden politically.”
Sorry, Larry, I’m center-left in the political landscape of the US, too, but wishful thinking is no substitute for realpolitik. Sure, Hur is a rightwinger, but his observation of Biden’s mental capabilities is based on the president’s very own testimony, where, among other instances, he embarassingly couldn’t even remember the years when he had been Vice President. That’s not normal, not even in stressful situations (which this wasn’t, there was no immediate threat nor pressure). A head of government has to he able to function under such circumstances or else he’s unfit for the job. And this mental decline of isn’t untypical at all for people of this age, Ronald Reagan for instance had been even younger when dementia hit. Of course, Alzheimer is a strong legal defense against accusations of ctiminal neglect.
It was Hur’s duty to determine if Biden could be prosecuted for his carelessness with classified documents of national importance so this evaluation was necessary, not simply a smear job. To ignore the result would be very risky. Biden’s popularity is already way lower than Bilary Clinton’s when she ran, and this news won’t help to increase it. And Biden’s disability hampers his campaign significantly. To let the opportunity for the traditional Superbowl interview pass is political malpractice. The Dems urgently need a younger, more popular candidate, like Gretchen Whitmer, and it’s only Biden’s stubborn, selfish and arrogant denial that stands in the way (sadly, like RBGs egoism). We can only hope that his wife may concinve him that he’s putting the country’s future at risk and needs to chose a successor (hopefully, not the dud Harris).
It was a partisan hit job by a Republican special counsel. The president’s lawyers noted that it is not Department of Justice practice and protocol to criticize someone who is not going to be charged, and tore apart Hur’s nine references to Biden’s memory in contrast to his willingness to “accept…other witnesses’ memory loss as completely understandable given the passage of time.”
Regarding your “no immediate threat nor pressure”:
They pointed out that “there is ample evidence from your interview that the President did well in answering your questions about years-old events over the course of five hours. This is especially true under the circumstances, which you do not mention in your report, that his interview began the day after the October 7 attacks on Israel. In the lead up to the interview, the President was conducting calls with heads of state, Cabinet members, members of Congress, and meeting repeatedly with his national security team.”
Nonetheless, they note, Biden provided “often detailed recollections across a wide range of questions, from staff management of paper flow in the West Wing to the events surrounding the creation of the 2009 memorandum on the Afghanistan surge. He engaged at length on theories you offered about the way materials were packed and moved during the transition out of the vice presidency and between residences. He pointed to flaws in the assumptions behind specific lines of questioning.”
They were not alone in their criticism. Others pointed out that Republicans have made Biden’s age a central point of attack, but Politico reported last October that while former House speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) was publicly mocking Biden’s age and mental fitness, he was “privately telling allies that he found the president sharp and substantive in their conversations.” Dan Pfeiffer of Pod Save America and Message Box noted that the report’s “characterizations of Biden don’t match those relayed by everyone who talks to him, including [Republicans].”
He explained: “There are few secrets in [Washington], and if Joe Biden acted like Hur says, we would all know. Biden meets with dozens of people daily—staffers, members of Congress, CEOs, labor officials, foreign leaders, and military and intelligence officials…. If Biden was regularly misremembering obvious pieces of information or making other mistakes that suggested he was not up to the job, it would be in the press. Washington is not capable of keeping something like that secret.”
We summarize. American or Western companies provide equipment for Shahed drones, provide communications logistics, slowly freeze the assets of Nazis in the Kremlin, hesitate to definitively confiscate the assets of war criminals…
And meanwhile, there is quibbling in Congress over aid to Ukraine.
I don’t have words strong enough to express my disgust.
We implore people of reason to take stock of the moment of history that is happening. Please vote for this aid to Ukraine, Taiwan and Israel. It’s a vote for life!
I fully support your bid. Ukrainians were very naïve thinking that the ruSSians are the only bad guys and the West is the true good guys. Both are two sides of the same coin when it comes to politics. One must know how to play both like a violin to survive in the world of today.
U.S. President Joe Biden received German Chancellor Olaf Scholtz at the White House where the two leaders discussed a number of topical issues, including on continued support for Ukraine in its struggle against Russia’s war of aggression.
That’s according to an Ukrinform correspondent.
Biden will say: I just talked to the French President Mitterand or something like that…………..but he was talking with a German accent, can you believe that?
Starlink certainly is able to disconnect terminals that are used in violation of the contract rules. The difficulty is to id these terminals, but there should be ways of doing that. If Musk is willing to cut the Russians off, I’m optimistic this problem can be dealt with. If the numbers increase instead, we’ll know on which side he’s on.