Ukraine remains critically dependent on Starlink, and a full replacement for Elon Musk's satellite system does not yet exist, writes The Atlantic. According to the publication, on October 11 a memo was sent to Ukrainian officers warning of possible restrictions on access to Starlink. The army was advised to prepare ahead of time alternative communication channels and action plans in the event of a system shutdown. Two days later, Starlink outages occurred in the war zone, which, according to Atlantic sources, led to the suspension of UAV flights and certain operations. In one episode, Ukraine allegedly lost naval drones in the Black Sea. Musk himself later said that he limited the use of civilian Starlink to attack drone strikes, stressing that the service was not intended to be used to kill people. At the same time, Ukraine uses hundreds of thousands of Starlink terminals, while the military Star Shield system is much more expensive and occupies only a small part of the satellite infrastructure of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. According to the publication, moving to it on a large scale will require significantly larger expenses. Ukraine and its European allies are trying to find an alternative, but there is currently no satellite network of similar scale. Even Europe's OneWeb is partially dependent on SpaceX for launches. The material also states that Moscow is developing its own Rasbet satellite system, which in the future could be used to control UAVs. A day earlier, Vladimir Putin said Russia was in talks with Musk on space issues and called him a "brilliant man." The Atlantic writers note that Musk's relationship with Ukraine has changed considerably during the war years: from active support for 2022 to restrictions on the military use of Starlink and criticism of the further expansion of aid to Kiev.