In Ukraine, President Zelensky made it clearest yet that a disruption in Starlink technology contributed to civilian deaths. Elon Musk admitted last week to having ordered the service to be slowed down. The intentional obstruction of Ukraine’s defenses has sparked bipartisan ire in Washington. Special correspondent Simon Ostrovsky and producer Katia Patin report on the consequences of the disruption.
Simon Ostrovsky:
It’s completely burned.
This is what Russia’s campaign to terrorize civilian targets far behind the front line looks like from the inside. And Ukraine’s president said Starlink’s slowdown was hampering the country’s ability to defend itself against attacks like this.
On October 14, shortly after Ukrainian troops began noticing that some drones flying at more than 100 miles per hour were unable to properly connect to the network, a Russian Shahed jet-powered drone slammed into this supermarket in the western Ukrainian city of Lutsk, killing six people.
The strike started a fire that destroyed the entire building and the people who died inside were suffocated or burned alive.
One of the victims was Maria Matviiuk, who worked at the European goods store. Her mother, Olena, told us that Maria considered calling in sick before going to work that day.
“It was noon. I heard the explosion,” Maria’s husband, Serhii, told me. “I immediately tried to call him, but I couldn’t get through.”
“She loved flowers, sir,” he told me. “And she planted them with her mother.”
Ukraine’s defensive capabilities rely heavily on Elon Musk’s constellation of satellites, where they are used for everything from communication between units to drone operations on the battlefield and behind the front lines. Without them, the war could end, a senior US military officer told The Atlantic magazine.
The SpaceX owner, who is a Trump ally and also the largest Republican contributor in election history, admitted to causing the outages last week on his social media platform, X, describing them as closing a loophole that had allowed Ukraine to — quote — “kill people.”
I asked Serhii and Olena if they had heard Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy say that Starlink’s shutdown was one of the reasons civilians were killed when Maria died.
Serhii tells me:
“Yes, we heard they would cut off access.”
“And maybe not just that day,” adds Olena.
Russia is increasingly relying on high-speed jet-powered Shahed drones, like the one used in Lutsk, to penetrate Ukraine’s air defenses. In response, Ukraine deployed a new cruise missile in October, developed jointly with Germany, according to Zelenskyy. They rely on Starlink, and some of them unexpectedly fell from the sky on the day of the Lutsk attack, allowing enemy drones to enter the country.
Olena Matviik, mother of a victim of the Russian attack (via translator): During these attacks, I wanted to draw 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 to mind. And it’s still there.
Simon Ostrovsky:
The News Hour emailed Elon Musk’s SpaceX company, which operates the Starlink satellite network, to ask how it was responding to Zelensky’s allegations about civilian casualties and for an explanation for the service interruptions. No response was provided at the time of broadcast.
For the PBS News Hour, I’m Simon Ostrovsky in Lutsk, Ukraine.
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