Editor’s note: This is a developing story and is being updated.
Starlink, the satellite internet service owned by Elon Musk, suffered a global outage on Sept. 15, the company announced on its official website.
The service has become vital for hospitals, schools, and front-line military units across Ukraine.
“Starlink is once again down across the entire front line,” Ukraine’s top drone warfare commander, Robert “Madyar” Brovdi, wrote on Telegram.
Downdetector, a platform that tracks service outages, reported tens of thousands of user complaints worldwide. The company said it was investigating the cause.
Nearly an hour later, Brovdi reported that connectivity was beginning to “gradually restore,” though Starlink has not officially confirmed a full recovery
The outage is the second in recent months.
The stakes are high for Ukraine, as Starlink has replaced much of the country’s destroyed communications infrastructure and supports both civilian and military connectivity.
Since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022, Kyiv has received over 50,000 Starlink terminals, with Poland providing nearly 30,000, the largest contribution by any single country.
Ukraine’s reliance on Starlink has previously been complicated by tensions with Musk.
Reuters reported in July 2023 that the billionaire ordered a temporary deactivation of satellite coverage over Kherson Oblast during a Ukrainian counteroffensive in 2022, sparking concerns about the vulnerability of critical systems to private decision-making.
‘Opinion is shifting towards this idea,’ says Polish FM Sikorski on NATO closing the sky over western Ukraine
Russia has faced little to no consequences following its brazen Sept. 10 attack on Poland, yet Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski is upbeat about NATO’s response and how things have played out since. “I think Russia lost this confrontation,” Sikorski told the Kyiv Independent in an interview on the sidelines of the Yalta European Strategy (YES) conference held in Kyiv on Sept 12-13. Poland downed only four out of 19 drones that entered its airspace, with one of the drones falling nearly
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