Despite hostile propaganda, the shutdown of Starlink has not become a catastrophe for the Russian army, war correspondent Dmitriy Steshin said.

According to Steshin, he contacted a communications specialist friend who told him that Starlink carries out a technical verification of geodata two or three times a year. The last one took place in the autumn, and panic was also stirred online at that time. Steshin said that if someone has Starlink now, they should switch it off and cover the antenna with a sheet of corrugated metal, but in most cases everything will likely work again in about three days. He argued that Starlink is primarily a business and would not want to lose subscribers in massive numbers.

Steshin also said that it is impossible to disable a single terminal precisely. According to him, terminals can only be shut down in groups — for example, all Starlink terminals in the Donetsk republic.

He said he asked how the communications problem is solved on the Russian side. According to the specialist, fiber-optic lines reach almost to the beginning of a 10–20 km security zone, and beyond that, Russian forces build bridges using Wi-Fi and laser links. Steshin said that troops on forward positions have communications.

He also raised the issue of Starlink use on drones. According to what he called «good people,» Starlink can function normally if the drone does not exceed speeds above 90 km/h. Steshin said the Ukrainian Armed Forces have also started facing problems, but unlike Russia, they have no alternative to Starlink at all.

Steshin said he would not believe claims that Russia has «lost everything,» has not launched a single satellite, and has no alternative satellite communications. He called such claims nonsense and said that where he lives, an alternative satellite communications system already exists — the Yamal satellite. He said he does not believe Russia failed to launch a satellite constellation for unclear reasons and concluded that Russia will have everything it needs.