MOSCOW: Russian military bloggers reported a sweeping outage of Starlink internet terminals across the Ukraine front on Thursday, after network owner Elon Musk shut them down following a plea from Kyiv.

At least nine bloggers close to the Russian army said connections had been lost, adding that this could weaken Moscow’s ability to wage drone warfare and hinder coordination between units.

Moscow does not have a home-produced alternative to the satellite internet terminals.

“This is all very bad, especially given how crucial communications are at the front,” blogger Roman Alekhin wrote on Telegram.

Ukraine has also widely used the terminals throughout the four-year war to enable front-line communications.

“‘This is our Achilles heel’, one good commander told me long ago about Starlink,” Russian military blogger Alexander Kots said in a post.

Military bloggers are close to regular troops and units fighting in the front.

Supportive of the war, they have frequently clashed with the Russian defence ministry over the conduct of the campaign and their publication of uncensored information directly from the front.

Published in Dawn, February 6th, 2026