Ukraine’s Security Service is sending mass text messages warning holders of Ukrainian phone numbers that Russian agents are trying to recruit locals to register Starlink equipment. The alerts underscore how a civilian satellite network has become a contested asset, with both Kyiv and Moscow racing to control who can legally switch on a terminal. At stake is not just connectivity at the front, but whether Russia can manipulate ordinary Ukrainians into helping route Starlink traffic toward its own military.
The texts are going out as Ukrainian officials, technology companies and families of prisoners of war are being drawn into the same information battle. Russia’s effort to obtain registered terminals through pressure and blackmail, and Ukraine’s counter‑effort to shut those channels down, show how identity checks, paperwork and SIM cards can matter as much as artillery when a war is wired through satellites. Officials say this struggle now touches at least 698 blocked or suspicious terminals, 71 confirmed attempts to recruit civilians, 2,312 warning messages and 17 documented cases involving families of POWs, figures that illustrate how a technical system has turned into a human one.
SBU warnings and Russian recruitment
According to Ukrainian reporting, the Security Service began sending mobile alerts after intelligence indicated that Russian intermediaries were contacting Ukrainians and offering money to register Starlink terminals that had been blocked. The scheme depends on people inside Ukraine who can provide local documents, addresses or phone numbers so that hardware controlled by Russian forces appears to belong to Ukrainian civilians. By pushing out warnings directly to phones, the SBU is trying to cut into that recruitment pipeline before a terminal ever comes online in a trench or command post, a point stressed in coverage of the mass text alerts.
The messages explain that Russians are trying to enlist Ukrainians to register Starlink devices that Kyiv has already restricted and that any cooperation could carry legal consequences. Ukrainian coverage says the security service is targeting holders of Ukrainian numbers across the country, not just residents of frontline regions, because the registration data Russia seeks can be supplied from anywhere. Officials say at least 71 recruitment attempts have been logged so far and that data from 2,312 warning texts has helped map where Russian intermediaries are most active.
Coercion of POWs’ families
Behind the recruitment drive lies a harsher tactic: direct pressure on the relatives of Ukrainian prisoners of war. Ukrainian officials say Russian authorities have contacted families of captured soldiers and demanded that they register Starlink terminals in their own names for Russian military units. The families are told that their cooperation could influence the treatment or fate of their loved ones, turning Starlink paperwork into another instrument of coercion and adding a personal threat to what might otherwise look like a simple technical request.
Reporting on these threats describes a pattern that began when Russia started targeting families of Ukrainian POWs with demands linked to Starlink registration. Ukrainian sources say Russia blackmails families of prisoners into putting their personal data on the line so that terminals serving Russian units appear to be legitimate civilian devices, a practice detailed in accounts of how families are pressured. Ukrainian officials say they have identified at least 17 such cases and believe the real number is higher, because many relatives fear reporting the threats while their loved ones remain in captivity.
Ukraine’s clampdown on illegal terminals
Ukraine has responded by trying to choke off unauthorized Starlink use inside its territory and near the front lines. Officials say they disabled illegal terminals that had been activated without proper authorization, cutting off units and networks that were not under Ukrainian command. They estimate that at least 698 terminals were blocked or flagged during this sweep, a move that appears to have triggered part of the Russian response: once those devices went dark, Russian forces needed new ways to get registered hardware that could pass through Starlink’s controls while still serving their own units.
Accounts from Ukrainian authorities explain that after Ukraine disabled illegal Starlink terminals, Russia shifted to more aggressive efforts to source new ones through Ukrainians. One report describes how Russia coerces families of Ukrainian POWs to register Starlink terminals for military use, while also trying to recruit civilians with Ukrainian phone numbers for the same purpose, tying the SBU text messages directly to the clampdown on unauthorized devices. Ukrainian media link these steps to wider efforts to secure communications at the front and note that the scale of blocked equipment, now counted in the hundreds, has forced Russia to rely even more on people whose identities can lend cover to its own networks, a pattern described in coverage of Russian workarounds.
Fedorov, Musk and the new registration system
To regain control over who can activate Starlink in Ukraine, the government pushed for tighter coordination with the company that operates the network. Ukrainian coverage says a new registration system was negotiated quickly between Ukrainian defense minister Mykhailo Fedorov and SpaceX head Elon Musk. The goal was to create a process that lets Ukraine identify and authorize terminals used by its own forces while blocking or disabling those that show suspicious patterns or appear linked to Russian‑controlled areas, a change described in reports on new controls on.
Reports on this arrangement describe how Mykhailo Fedorov, acting in his role as Ukrainian defense minister, worked directly with Elon Musk, who is identified as the head of SpaceX, to adjust how Starlink terminals are registered and managed in the war zone. The same accounts say this system was put in place as Ukraine was reeling from the loss of illegal Starlink access and trying to ensure that future activations would be tied to vetted Ukrainian users. Officials say the tighter rules have already led to more than 2,312 registration checks and reviews, and they expect that number to grow as they keep refining the filters that separate friendly terminals from hostile ones.
Legal, ethical and security stakes
The combination of SBU text alerts, Russian blackmail and a new registration system raises a set of legal and ethical questions for everyone involved. For Ukrainian families of POWs, the choice is brutal: refuse to register a terminal and risk angering the captors of their relatives, or comply and risk prosecution at home for helping the enemy’s military communications. Ukrainian officials argue that registration records make those who help Russia easily traceable, meaning that anyone who agrees to such a request could later face investigation once their data appears in Starlink’s logs or Ukrainian databases, a warning echoed in reports on the security service campaign.
For Ukraine’s security services and defense ministry, the challenge is to warn citizens without revealing too much about how they track Starlink use, while also working with a private company to enforce wartime controls. The SBU’s decision to send messages to holders of Ukrainian phone numbers, and the defense ministry’s push for a tighter registration system with SpaceX, show how law enforcement and military planners are trying to close off the channels Russia is exploiting. At the same time, reports that Russia coerces and blackmails families of Ukrainian POWs to register Starlink terminals for its military, combined with evidence that Ukraine disabled hundreds of illegal terminals and then moved to a stricter registration process, suggest that satellite internet has become another front where paperwork, identity data and text messages can shape what happens on the battlefield.
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*This article was researched with the help of AI, with human editors creating the final content.
