One technician climbing a tower. One FPV drone closing in. It sounds like a single tragic frame from an endless war. But it captures something larger: Russia's scramble to replace what Elon Musk took away.
Earlier this month, Ukraine appealed directly to Musk, asking him to disable Russian military access to SpaceX's Starlink internet system. The Russians had been running thousands of unauthorized terminals along the front — smuggled through Dubai and ex-Soviet republics, activated in countries where Starlink is legal, then shipped into the war zone.
With the flip of a switch, Musk complied.
The effect was immediate. Russian military bloggers began sounding the alarm, the message consistent across channels: there are no alternatives.
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Russian forces, suddenly cut off, began improvising — setting up repeaters and relay stations to sustain drone video feeds and battlefield communications. And sending technicians up towers to do it.
Those technicians keep appearing in Ukrainian drone compilation videos as easy targets.
What makes this more than a communications setback is something few outside the conflict fully grasp. Unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs) are now coming to scale on both sides of this war. They haul ammunition and supplies into what soldiers call the kill zone, guided remotely by operators miles away. Starlink terminals mounted on board make that possible. Without Starlink, the robots stop. And soldiers go in instead.
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The result, according to sources familiar with Russian battlefield operations, is that Russia is now losing even more soldiers than before — men replacing machines that no longer work.
Which feeds directly into Ukraine's current strategy: killing Russians faster than Putin can replace them.
The bandwidth war has a body count. And right now, Russia is losing it.
