A Russian senator has demanded the destruction of the Starlink satellite constellation, claiming its loss would allow Russia to win the war in Ukraine within weeks, The Moscow Times reported. The call landed as a joint European investigation revealed that Russia and China have worked on anti-Starlink weapons for three years without producing a solution.
“Koschei’s needle in Elon Musk’s egg”
Dmitry Rogozin, a senator and former head of Russia’s space agency Roscosmos, wrote on Telegram that Ukraine must lose access to Starlink. He demanded a “systematic zeroing out” of the satellite constellation.
“The enemy will lose its advantage in global control of unmanned systems, and the war will end within two to three weeks with its complete rout. Starlink is that very needle of Koschei the Immortal that must be taken out of Elon Musk’s egg and broken,” Rogozin stated.
Communication and control of unmanned systems matter more in modern combat than thousands of tanks and aircraft, Rogozin claimed. He asserted that Russia knows several ways to cut its enemy off from Starlink, without naming any.
China offered anti-Starlink options back in 2023
Rogozin’s statement came amid the publication of an investigation by Der Spiegel, The Insider, and Le Monde into Russian-Chinese military-technical cooperation. Beijing offered Moscow various ways to counter the Starlink network as early as 2023, the outlets found.
The Chinese proposals ranged from cyberattacks and diplomatic pressure to developing means of physically destroying satellites. So far, no solution has been proposed, according to the investigation.
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