I'm John Batchel. I welcome my good colleague, Henry Sikolsky, Executive Director

and Non-Proliferation Policy

Education Center, go immediately to Ukraine conflict, the other war. And there are positives here,

many, for the future of war. Henry, a very good evening to you. I recall early in the conflict

after Russia attacked

the revelation that Starlink, Elon Musk, and we're talking over Starlink right now,

made itself available for free in some fashion or certainly a, to the Ukrainian government to maintain communications

with their internet down. Many years later, we're finding that the loss of Starlink and

telegram is damaging to the Russian war effort. Now, that's quite a change from those early days.

What's happened? Good evening to you.

Good evening. Great to be on your show. Well, we called Russia's Bluff. Mr. Musk unplugged Starlink

to Russian downlinks. And that meant the ability of the Russians to use Starlink to have secure communications

to direct their unmanned vehicles, drones, ground unmanned vehicles, etc.

Went to zero.

They could have used, and they were using something called Telegram, which was a

Starlink equivalent, I guess, for Russia, that was Russian. But because the Russian public was

using this to broadcast what they thought of the war, which was not positive, Putin unplugged that.

Well, what's happened is that means they can't field their offensive unmanned systems,

and Ukraine has been able to, and that's caused an asymmetry where there's been an undisclosed advance, presumably

quite large in the Zaporizia area, and it's getting worse.

Not only has the unplugging of these systems by Putin allowed the Ukrainians an advantage to make offensive operations,

but it's persisting to such a great extent that now Ukraine is building defensive barriers,

...