Europe is rushing to provide Ukraine with alternatives to Elon Musk’s Starlink broadband satellite network, after the US withdrew military aid and intelligence sharing from the country this week.
Four large satellite operators — Luxembourg’s SES, Spain’s Hisdesat, Viasat, owner of the UK’s Inmarsat, and France’s Eutelsat/OneWeb — have all confirmed to the Financial Times that they are in talks with governments and EU institutions about how to provide back-up connectivity to Ukraine.
But replacing the ubiquitous laptop-sized devices that have become so crucial to Ukraine’s defence against Russian aggression remains a tall order. More than 40,000 terminals are in operation across the military, hospitals, businesses and aid organisations, according to Ukraine’s digital minister Mykhailo Fedorov.
Miguel Ángel García Primo, chief executive of Spain’s secure government satellite services provider Hisdesat, said his company had been contacted by several European officials. “We are part of this initiative,” he said.
Last week’s clash in the Oval Office between Donald Trump and Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy had prompted “immediate discussions about whether the EU could provide alternatives”, he added.
European leaders this week rallied behind Zelenskyy at a summit in Brussels where they also pledged to significantly increase their own defence capabilities. Ukraine’s defence minister Rustem Umerov also talked to his German counterpart Boris Pistorius in Berlin, including on the effort to set up a European back-up to Starlink.
Zelenskyy is set to begin talks with the US next week on ending the war, but concerns remain that access to Starlink could be used to pressure Kyiv into agreeing an unfavourable deal.
Starlink’s speed and reliability has made it an integral part of the way the war is fought in Ukraine. In command posts set up in basements and hide-outs, officers get a constant, real-time stream of footage used to direct artillery and drone strikes.
Ukrainian forces also use Starlink because it is less vulnerable to Russian jamming devices, compared with traditional radio communications, said Pavlo Narozhny, a Ukrainian military expert.
But the service has been patchy in recent months, particularly in areas close to the frontline. “It’s been like that for a while now,” said one drone operator near the eastern Ukrainian stronghold of Pokrovsk, which Russian forces have been seeking to capture since last year.
In the short term, a patchwork of European services operating from different orbits could be used as back-up — including for secure government communications and internet connectivity in cities, hospitals or energy plants.
But it is “very difficult if not impossible for someone to deploy the same number of terminals Starlink already has because they have been accumulated over years”, said García Primo.
Lluc Palerm Serra, research director at space consultancy AnalysysMason, said: “There are alternatives but there are none that can offer the level of supply that Starlink has.” Even if all of Europe’s capacity over Ukraine were aggregated, it would still fall short of that provided by Starlink.
Starlink is flying more than 7,000 satellites in low orbit at roughly 550km above sea level. The satellites travel so quickly over any given point on the Earth that there is constant access to signals from the ground, he said.
The speed at which signals make the return journey from Earth to space and back is faster on Starlink devices than on rival services relying on fewer satellites travelling in higher orbits. Yet the difference may only be fractions of a second, so latency may only be an issue for certain applications.
Luxembourg’s SES already provides services to Ukraine, said chief executive Adel Al-Saleh. However, he also confirmed that the company was “involved in these conversations” about boosting capacity to the country. While there had been discussions about an alternative for several months, recent events had “amplified” the talks, he said.
Viasat said it would be possible to address Ukraine’s needs. “Significant . . . capacity exists from a variety of other sources,” a Viasat spokesperson told the FT. “Even more is coming on line shortly. We have the capacity and capabilities to assist and are very glad to do what we can to help address this critical security matter in the Ukraine and in Europe more broadly.”
Lawmakers in the European parliament have increased pressure on the commission to speed up co-ordination efforts on existing technologies and bring forward a “Govsatcom” initiative — which will pool existing secure government satellite capacities but was only expected to become operational next year.
“We are looking at how to best support Ukraine,” a commission spokesperson said earlier this week. “Govsatcom can address the immediate secure connectivity needs through pooled member states’ satellite capacities.”
Separately, Maxar Technologies, the largest supplier of commercial satellite imagery to the US government, stopped its service to Ukraine this week.
But Anders Linder, head of Maxar’s international division, indicated that the company was open to a workaround, pointing out that “any of our commercial customers, who are all US partners and allies, are able to use the data they purchase from us however they see fit. That includes sharing it with their allies, such as Ukraine.”
Many in Europe see the current crisis as justification for Europe’s ambition to build its own multi-orbit broadband network in low Earth orbit, a project called Iris². The €10.6bn project will not be operational until 2030, so cannot provide a short-term solution. However, it was giving added urgency to discussions around the type of platform and services required, said two people close to the programme.
“Europe is rethinking everything that has to do with defence right now, so I won’t be surprised if they review the scale of Iris²,” said Serra.
Additional reporting by Charles Clover in London, Natalia Sawka in Warsaw, Henry Foy in Brussels and Laura Pitel in Berlin
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