by inemesitaffia | 2026-02-12 12:01:42+00:00
This is absolute nonsense. The Ukrainian government must have weighed cost/benefits and were worried about their equipment going off(as it has). This is mostly an administrative fix not technical. And requires political will.

SpaceX has had the ability to allowlist devices since at least October 2023. Federov said he'd do this in Q1 2024.(You, like many, don't realize most terminals in Ukraine, even terminals used by the military, are purchased by private individuals outside Ukraine using foreign payments, those people raising money online aren't buying it in Ukraine)

Ask Ukrainians you know who have terminals when they added their equipment to the list. When they were asked to. Why they didn't when they were asked.

The fact that Ukrainians are unable to get their logistics together (note the lack of a list of known "good" equipment for years and termination of several Ukrainian users now) is responsible for this.

>Who is asking SpaceX to act on their own

People like you claiming I'm reversing the roles when there's no evidence SpaceX hasn't been willing and able to allowlist equipment for ages. And several people who wanted SpaceX to go hunting for Russian operated equipment as though they had a different origin from Ukrainian ones. (Or should SpaceX have turned off equipment until Ukrainians submitted a list of known good ones independently?)

There are Ukrainian soldiers on the frontline today without service, they are blaming the Ukrainian government (who they didn't trust to do it right or do right by them in the first place) for the issue. There's a Universe that SpaceX has dodged where they would be blamed for turning the equipment off. That's your zero blame.

We'll see books written post-conflict and the truth will come out.

>basic bit of human decency

You should have some and stop spreading conspiracies.(To reverse the roles Ukraine would have had a known good list of all their equipment and SpaceX would have refused to implement an allowlist. The announcement for device registration, especially for military users and the promise the equipment won't be repurposed tell a markedly different story. Maybe we'd have a "SpaceX turns off Ukrainian terminals, soldiers in disarray" article from 2023 with you insisting the unregistered Ukrainian terminals should have been kept on until Ukraine was ready. {As they did})

The first private report of this issue I heard was in H2 2023. In early 2024 the Ukrainian government said it had become a systemic issue and they estimated at least 2000 dishes were being used by the Russians. The Pentagon and SpaceX formed a working group to and terminated several accounts. Some people even got arrested and prosecuted. A minuscle number of Ukrainian terminals were terminated too.

Most if not all of this is public. Some of it in public hearings.

But even back then the Ukrainian government was informed by foreign and local people it would never really go to zero until a list of dishes was collected and an allowlist implemented.

Federov was digital minister back then and he said he'd do it. He's now Defence minister and he's done it. Maybe he needed political power to do it?

But it's SpaceX fault that Ukraine didn't collect it back then?