Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs of Ukraine Ihor Bondarenko stated this in an interview with Ukrinform.

“Actually, Starlink continues to meet a fairly large part of their communication needs. The positive point here is that Russian EW vehicles can’t do anything with them,” he said.

As an example, Bondarenko described a case when the Ukrainian National Guard was deployed in one of the districts of the Kyiv region in March, and active combat operations were carried out in mid-March. According to the deputy minister, the Ministry of Internal Affairs managed to transfer Starlink to this unit. And then representatives of the ministry communicated directly with the commander of this unit.

The commander said that when the Russians entered the village of Moshchun exactly at the time when our fighters were there, they used as much as possible means of radio electronic warfare against the Ukrainians.

“And nothing worked on ours – neither the cell phone nor the radio station, but Starlink was working. And at least this way this unit was in contact with neighboring units and understood where and what it was,” he said.

Among other things, he said that before the full-scale invasion of the Russian Federation, the Ministry of Internal Affairs used the European satellite communication system KA-SAT, which was used by all forces of the security and defense sector – nothing else. Analogues in Ukraine.

According to Bondarenko, these were portable field complexes that allowed the deployment of a satellite communication channel, for example, when one or another unit left its place in field conditions.

And on the morning of February 24, we received information that this system was not working. At around 10:00 am, we already realized that there was no point in waiting for satellite communications to be re-established, as some of these portable complexes were disabled. That is, even if the platform itself continues to work, there is no set in which it is possible to work”, – explained the Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs.

He said that there was a quick brainstorming at the time about what the alternative could be, and that one of the parameters of potential alternative devices was the speed of communication channels, the availability of sufficient quantities, and the logistics parameters of arrival.

“At around 12:00 on the same day, make sure that there is no need for communication with Ukraine’s Minister of Digital Transformation, Mykhailo Albertovych Fedorov, that other options in addition to Starlink – relatively inexpensive, complex, fast and in sufficient volume – do not need to be contacted,” said Bondarenko.

According to him, Fedorov even then directly communicated with the American side – he also had a public correspondence on Twitter with Elon Musk, the head of Tesla and SpaceX companies.

“And I have already distributed the first batch of Starlinks that arrived in Ukraine on February 28. And so far, we have received them in quite a significant amount, thanks to both our European and American partners,” he said.

As reported, the first batch of Starlink satellite Internet stations arrived in Ukraine on February 28.

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