Ukraine gets Elon Musk's Starlink satellite terminals - and a friendly warning about safety

A shipment of Starlink terminals has arrived in Ukraine after the country's digital transformation minister asked SpaceX CEO Elon Musk for help

"Starlink — here. Thanks, @elonmusk," Ukrainian minister Mykhailo Fedorov tweeted alongside an image of the back of a lorry 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.

Starlink — here. Thanks, @elonmuskpic.twitter.com/dZbaYqWYCf

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.

The risk is that satellite transmissions from the ground in Ukraine could be triangulated and targeted by the Russian military, which has previously used the technique to deadly effect in Chechnya and Syria, Scott-Railton said.

14/ Connectivity in #Ukraine is necessary.Now that Starlink devices are headed into an active conflict zone, though, *possible* risks are about to get battle tested.I hope that OPSEC is front of mind as decisions are made about terminal distribution, use & placement,

"Early in a conflict with disrupted internet, satellite internet feels like a saviour. But it quickly introduces very real, deadly new vulnerabilities," he said.

"If you don't understand