In Ukraine, President Zelenskyy made the clearest indication yet that a disruption of Starlink technology contributed to civilian deaths. Elon Musk admitted last week to ordering the slowdown of the service. The intentional hindrance of Ukrainian defenses led to bipartisan anger in Washington. Special correspondent Simon Ostrovsky and producer Katia Patin report on the fallout from the disruption.
Simon Ostrovsky:
It’s completely burned out.
This is what Russia’s campaign to terrorize civilian targets that are far behind the front line looks like from the inside. And Ukraine’s president has said the Starlink slowdown hampered the country’s ability to defend against attacks like this one.
On October 14, shortly after Ukrainian troops began noticing that some drones flying faster than 100 miles per hour couldn’t connect to the network properly, a Russian jet-powered Shahed-type drone slammed into this supermarket in the Western Ukrainian city of Lutsk, killing six people.
The strike started a fire that burnt this whole building down, and the people who died inside actually suffocated or burned to death.
One of the victims was Maria Matviiuk, who worked at the European goods store. Her mother, Olena, told us Maria had considered calling in sick before coming into work that day.
“It was noon. I heard the explosion, Maria’s husband, Serhii, tells me. I immediately tried calling her, but I couldn’t get through.”
“She loved flowers, sir,” he tells me. “And she planted these with her mother.”
Ukraine’s defensive capabilities are heavily reliant on Elon Musk’s constellation of satellites, where they’re used for everything from communication between units to drone operations on the battlefield and behind the front lines. Without them, the war could grind to a halt, a senior U.S. military officer told “The Atlantic” magazine.
The SpaceX owner, who is a Trump ally and also the largest contributor to Republicans in electoral history, admitted to causing the outages last week on his social media platform, X, describing it as the closure of a loophole that had allowed Ukraine to — quote — “kill people.”
I asked Serhii and Olena whether they’d heard Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy say that the Starlink shutdown was one of the reasons that civilians were killed when Maria died.
Serhii tells me:
“Yes, we’d heard that they’d cut off access.”
“And possibly not just on that day,” adds Olena.
Russia increasingly relies on high-speed jet-powered Shahed drones like the one used in Lutsk to break through Ukrainian air defenses. In response, Ukraine deployed a new cruise missile, jointly developed with Germany in October, according to Zelenskyy. They rely on Starlink, and some of them unexpectedly fell out of the sky on the day of the Lutsk attack, allowing enemy drones to enter the country.
Olena Matviik, Mother of Russian Strike Victim (through translator): During those attacks, I wanted to draw a picture of Putin and Trump sitting together, each holding a glass of Ukrainian blood, as if Putin had invited Trump to drink Ukrainian blood with him. I’m sorry, but that’s the image that came into my mind. And it’s still there.
Simon Ostrovsky:
The “News Hour” sent an e-mail to Elon Musk’s company SpaceX, which operates the Starlink satellite network, to ask how it responded to the allegations Zelenskyy made about civilian casualties and for an explanation of the service disruptions. No response was made available by the time of broadcast.
For the “PBS News Hour,” I’m Simon Ostrovsky in Lutsk, Ukraine.
Source: www.pbs.org
