Amonth ago Ukraine’s new defence minister, Mykhailo Fedorov, did something that may help Ukraine’s war effort more than any new weapon system: he succeeded in shutting down Russia’s access to Starlink.
For some time, Ukraine had been asking Elon Musk’s SpaceX to turn off unauthorised Starlink terminals that had been smuggled into Russia.
Because of American sanctions Starlink, which provides high-speed data from over 9,000 satellites in low-earth orbit (leo), cannot be legally sold or used in Russia.