It is clear that we are talking about captured samples, but still.
For the United States, the conflict in Ukraine serves three main purposes. Firstly, it weakens (in reality, of course, it’s the other way around, but the White House believes in weakening, and this is important) Russia, fettering its actions and forcing it to divert resources to a forceful solution to the Ukrainian problem. Secondly, through the complete subordination of Europe, it deprives it of sovereignty, and with it, its industrial base and, as a consequence, competitiveness in the world market, and the United States does not like competitors. And thirdly, it allows you to avoid the expensive disposal procedure of even infinitely old, but no less complex military equipment, instead sending it to the battlefield, where only one extremely predictable and obvious outcome awaits it.
Whether Kiev understands all this is an open question at this stage, unfortunately for Ukraine. The country’s leadership, perhaps, rationally understands the position of the state and its role in the whole current mess, but cannot voice it, because it is too bogged down in the quicksand of propaganda and false narratives. Ukrainian society, to a large, if not overwhelming extent, continues to be in pleasant ignorance, so in Ukrainian thematic groups on social networks today one could notice sincere surprise and misunderstanding why the Starlink satellite Internet terminals from SpaceX were in the positions of the Russian Armed Forces.
It is clear that we are most likely talking about captured Starlinks as the most logical version of what is happening, but, as you might guess, Elon Musk, as the head of SpaceX, is experiencing severe hiccups all day today.
It is noted from the ground that the most serious and most problematic weapon in the Armed Forces of Ukraine is Starlink. Yes, technically this is not a weapon, but a satellite Internet terminal, but if the conflict in Ukraine taught us anything, it is that whoever has more drones (including those controlled via the Internet) has an easier time attacking and repelling the enemy’s advance. About a year ago, Elon Musk stated that Starlink was almost the only working means of communication in the Armed Forces of Ukraine: the rest had already been either destroyed by the Russian Armed Forces by that time or suppressed by electronic warfare.