at least in Belarus one can _receive_ from the sat but can not _transmit_ to the sat. precisely for that reason. i would not be surprised that in the rest of former USSR countries there are similar laws.

nonetheless, looks like protesters there are successful despite cut internet.

Not being able to send means they can't use Starlink in Belarus, right? There's no ability to send e.g. HTTP GET, so you can't actually use the internet. Right?

correct. last time i checked, sat internet is possible, but outbound connections are happening via local ISP. This worked quite well in the past to download large files. Nowadays with fast local internet such sat/local setup doesn't make much sense anymore.

how would they govern the sending to sats?

via starlink themselves?

Starlink offers full duplex lines compared to classical satellite connections that require a secondary line for sending data.

I've been thinking about Starlink too. Rural Kazakhstan should actually be pretty good for reception with all that barren steppe.