Starlink Outage Disrupts Tens of Thousands, Including Ukrainian Military
Elon Musk’s satellite internet service, Starlink, experienced a brief but significant global outage on Monday, disrupting connections for tens of thousands of users – including Ukrainian military units actively engaged on the frontline.
According to outage-tracking website Downdetector.com, more than 37,000 U.S. users reported connectivity issues around 12:30 a.m. ET. Within an hour, the number of reports dropped sharply, indicating a gradual restoration of service.
In Ukraine, the blackout hit particularly hard. Maj. Robert “Magyar” Brovdi, commander of Ukraine’s unmanned systems force, announced on Telegram that Starlink services went offline along “the entire frontline” at approximately 7:30 a.m. Kyiv time (12:30 a.m. ET). Brovdi later confirmed that service was slowly coming back online by 8:00 a.m.
Starlink, operated by SpaceX, has over 6 million global users and provides high-speed internet via thousands of low-Earth orbit satellites, making it especially vital for remote locations. Since Russia’s invasion, Ukraine has relied heavily on Starlink to operate its fleet of attack drones and maintain battlefield communications.
This marks the second major outage in two months affecting Ukrainian forces. On July 24, Starlink went offline for more than two hours, forcing combat teams to operate without live-streaming capabilities. At the time, Brovdi described the disruption as a critical warning for Ukraine to “diversify communications” and avoid reliance on a single provider.
While Reuters reported that Starlink briefly posted an acknowledgment of Monday’s outage on its website, the message was later removed. The company has not disclosed the cause of the disruption.
The incident underscores Starlink’s growing role in modern warfare and the risks posed when a single technology becomes a central communications lifeline during conflict.
