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SpaceX’s Starlink user terminals are being openly sold in Russia, though CEO Elon Musk has denied knowledge of any such sales in the country.
The terminals, which link users with the Starlink satellite constellation are available on the Chinese company DJI’s website in Russia.
The Shenzhen-based firm is better known as one of the world’s leading drone producers. Soon after Russia began its February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, DJI announced it would temporarily suspend business in both countries pending “compliance assessments.”
They would have used them in Russia at some point prior to actions in Ukraine. Plus, if they were sold to a Chinese company, they would be tracked and expected to be in China.
And that opens up another box of questions.
Why are the starlink satellites of Russia active at all? The amount of non Russian customers with legitimate use for Starlink would be a very very low number.
Why?
True. It would also be easy enough to set up a whitelist by cooperating with the Ukrainian government. Alas, the temporary blackout last year made it obvious where Musk’s intentions lie in regard to Russia.
This makes no sense, they don’t need to set them up in russia. You can transfer your starlink account to anyone, you don’t need to be in the country you bought it from.
Every company tracks where major hardware is shipped and the intended country of use. A company like Starlink definitely would because they need to know demand per region and support requirements in that region.
They did, when it was shipped to China, why are you assuming they don’t know where these are? They do, but it’s not easy to figure out if it’s the UA using them or the russians because the fighting is so damn close to each other.