Brigadier General and Commander of the Azov Regiment and the 3rd Separate Assault Brigade, Andrey Biletsky, spoke about the impact of blocking Starlink satellite terminals for the Russian army on combat operations.
Brigadier General and Commander of the Azov Regiment and the 3rd Separate Assault Brigade, Andrey Biletsky, spoke about the impact of blocking Starlink satellite terminals for the Russian army on combat operations.
Earlier, the Cabinet of Ministers adopted a resolution that makes it mandatory to verify all Starlink satellite terminals operating in Ukraine. Unverified devices will be disconnected from the network over time. These measures were taken to prevent the use of smuggled Starlink terminals by the Russian military on Ukrainian territory.
The Independent reports that the number of Russian drone attacks in Ukraine has decreased by 40%, allowing Ukraine to regain some territory. According to Andriy Biletsky, the Starlink shutdown had a «huge» impact on the Russian occupation army.
«After blocking Starlink for the Russians, their level of effectiveness compared to ours has sharply decreased, since Starlink is practically irreplaceable as a combat communications system. Starlink can only be replaced by another Starlink. Therefore, the impact of Starlink on the current course of the war is enormous. Over the past two weeks, the effectiveness of Russian strikes has deteriorated significantly, by about 20-40%,» he said.
According to Biletsky, the consequences of disabling Starlink for the Russian Federation could be long-term.
«This is a great opportunity for Ukraine, and I think — this is a subjective opinion — that within a month or two [Russian forces] will partially restore their effectiveness with the help of other means, such as Russian satellite communications, etc.,» said the commander of the Azov regiment.
According to him, in the near future, the Russians will not be able to fully restore the level of efficiency they had with Starlink, and will not return to it even in three or five years.
«The Americans have an absolute advantage over any army in the world at the moment — and this is Starlink,» says Andriy Biletsky.
Earlier, military expert on drones and electronic warfare Sergey «Flash» Bezkrestnov noted that the Russian occupiers were facing a «catastrophe» due to the Starlink outage, which affected the command and control of the invading forces. As a result, the Russians were forced to stop assault operations in many areas of the front.
