KIEV: Ukraine on Monday said it had received donated Starlink satellite Internet terminals from SpaceX, but an Internet security researcher warned these could become Russian targets.
“Starlink — here. Thanks, @elonmusk,” Ukraine’s vice prime minister, Mykhailo Fedorov, tweeted, days after asking SpaceX’s billionaire chief executive officer Elon Musk for help. Fedorov’s tweet included a picture of the back of a military-looking truck, loaded with terminals.
Musk tweeted back, “You are most welcome.”
The terminals look like home satellite television dishes and can provide relatively fast Internet service, by residential standards, by connecting to a fleet of satellites in low orbit.
But John Scott-Railton, a senior researcher at the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab project, took to Twitter to warn the terminals could become Russian targets.
“Re: @elonmusk’s starlink donation. Good to see. But remember: if #Putin controls the air above #Ukraine, users’ uplink transmissions become beacons ... for airstrikes,” he tweeted.
“#Russia has decades of experience hitting people by targeting their satellite communications,” he added in a series of 15 tweets detailing the risks. (https://bit.ly/35BEFs2)
Musk said on Saturday that Starlink is available in Ukraine and SpaceX is sending more terminals to the country, whose Internet has been disrupted due to the Russian invasion.
Fedorov thanked Ukraine’s ambassador to the United States for helping to swiftly approve the activation of Starlink in Ukraine.
One of the challenges is to install end-user terminals, which require a clear view of the sky to connect to Starlink, Tim Farrar, a consultant in satellite communications said.
As high-rise buildings can block the service, one has to go to the top of the highest building nearby to set up the antenna, he said. “That’s a fairly vulnerable place to be.”
“It is not going to be something that can offer a replacement for terrestrial Internet on a large scale,” he said.
SpaceX did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.
Ukraine gets Starlink Internet terminals — and friendly warning about safety
https://arab.news/2xms8
Ukraine gets Starlink Internet terminals — and friendly warning about safety
- The terminals look like home satellite television dishes and can provide relatively fast Internet service, by residential standards, by connecting to a fleet of satellites in low orbit
Ethiopia accuses Eritrea of arming rebels in escalating war of words
- The charge by Ethiopia’s federal police escalates a feud between Ethiopia and Eritrea
- The two countries fought a three-year border war that broke out in 1998
ADDIS ABABA: Ethiopian police said they had seized thousands of rounds of ammunition sent by Eritrea to rebels in Ethiopia’s Amhara region, an allegation Eritrea dismissed as a falsehood intended to justify starting a war.
The charge by Ethiopia’s federal police escalates a feud between Ethiopia and Eritrea, longstanding foes who reached a peace deal in 2018 that has since given way to renewed threats and acrimony.
The police said in a statement late on Wednesday they had seized 56,000 rounds of ammunition and arrested two suspects this week in the Amhara region, where Fano rebels have waged an insurgency since 2023.
“The preliminary investigation conducted on the two suspects who were caught red-handed has confirmed that the ammunition was sent by the Shabiya government,” the statement said, using a term for Eritrea’s ruling party.
Eritrea’s Information Minister Yemane Gebremeskel told Reuters that Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s Prosperity Party (PP) was looking for a pretext to attack.
“The PP regime is floating false flags to justify the war that it has been itching to unleash for two long years,” he said.
In an interview earlier this week with state-run media, Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki said the Prosperity Party had declared war on his country. He said Eritrea did not want war, but added: “We know how to defend our nation.”
The two countries fought a three-year border war that broke out in 1998, five years after Eritrea won its independence from Ethiopia. They signed a historic agreement to normalize relations in 2018 that won Ethiopia’s Abiy the Nobel Peace Prize the following year. Eritrean troops then fought in support of Ethiopia’s army during a 2020-22 civil war in Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region.
But relations soured after Asmara was frozen out of the peace deal that ended that conflict. Since then, Eritrea has bristled at repeated public declarations by Abiy that landlocked Ethiopia has a right to sea access — comments many in Eritrea, which lies on the Red Sea, view as an implicit threat of military action.
Abiy has said Ethiopia does not seek conflict with Eritrea and wants to address the issue of sea access through dialogue.
