Adviser to the Minister of Defense Serhii “Flash” Beskrestnov said that Russians are looking for Ukrainians willing, for money, to register Starlink terminals in their own names and then hand them over to the Russian forces.
According to Serhii “Flash” Beskrestnov, Starlink is so important to the adversary that they have set up an entire network to search for traitors who would agree to formalize the equipment in their own names through official Ukrainian procedures. He уточifies that people are lured with offers of “easy money,” and the sums in such “jobs” have risen to up to UAH 10,000.
Beskrestnov explains the logic of the scheme: the Russians needs a person with Ukrainian documents who will create a formal registration record for a terminal, after which the Starlink can be transferred to occupied territories or directly to Russian units. As a result, the occupiers obtain a communications channel, while in Ukraine a specific name remains linked to the registration.
Beskrestnov separately warns that anonymity in such cases is illusory. According to him, Ukraine will cross-check the Starlink serial numbers found in Russian possession with registration data. If an investigation establishes that a terminal registered to a specific individual was used on the Russian side, this may serve as grounds for criminal prosecution. “Flash” emphasizes that “easy money seekers” risk receiving up to 15 years in prison or life imprisonment if people are killed as a result of using such a Starlink terminal.
Each Starlink terminal has unique identifiers. These can be recorded when the equipment is discovered and compared with the registration records created during the formalization process. That is why attempts to “simply register and transfer” a terminal create a verifiable chain that investigators can reconstruct and link to the fact of the Russian use of the communications system.
