The increasing dependence of Ukraine’s military on Starlink became ever more apparent, raising the concerns of its creator.

Last year, Musk admitted he had prevented Starlink from being used as part of a Ukrainian attack on a Russian naval base on the Crimean Peninsula, which was annexed by the Kremlin in 2014. His comments prompted an outcry in Kyiv and a US Senate query.

Musk said on the All-In Podcast that he would have extended Starlink for the Ukrainians in Crimea if US President Joe Biden had directed him to do so, but no such directive came.

He said Starlink had been turned off over Crimea originally because of US sanctions on Russia.

Concerns about Starlink come as Russian forces launched 45 drones over Ukraine on Sunday in a five-and-a-half-hour barrage, officials said.

In a statement, the Ukrainian air force said it had shot down 40 of the Iranian-made Shahed drones over nine different regions, including on the outskirts of the country’s capital, Kyiv.

The 5½ hour attack targeted agricultural facilities and coastal infrastructure, officials for Ukraine’s southern defence forces wrote on Telegram.

They said that a strike in the Mykolaiv region had injured one person, sparking a fire and damaging nearby residential buildings.

Another person was injured in Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk region when a blaze broke out due to falling debris from a destroyed drone, said the head of the region’s military administration, Serhiy Lysak.

Loading

Border police in Moldova also said Sunday that fragments of a “Shahed-type drone” were found near the southern town of Etulia close to the border with Ukraine, but that the debris posed no danger to communities nearby.

“There is a suspicion that the detected drone debris is one of the drones shot down by the Ukrainian anti-aircraft system,” the border police said in a statement, referencing overnight attacks launched on Friday by Russian forces on Ukraine’s Izmail region.

The distance between Etulia and Izmail is about 40 kilometres as the crow flies.

Authorities said access to the impact site has been restricted.

Moldovan President Maia Sandu responded to the incident by saying in a post on the social media platform X, that “Russia’s war on Ukraine hits close to home in Moldova — again.”

“The discovery of Shahed drone debris in southern Moldova today serves as another stark reminder of the grim reality we face,” she said.