Europe's $24T Breakup with Visa and Mastercard Has Begun

Re:Europe's $24T Breakup with Visa and Mastercard Has Begun by varjag on Tuesday February 10, 2026 @04:20PM (#46967086)

Starlink was never available in Russia due to the sanctions regime. It's only use by Russians was via grey import terminals on the frontline in Ukraine (made possible due to complications of geofencing).

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Europe's $24T Breakup with Visa and Mastercard Has Begun by fhdkweig on Tuesday February 10, 2026 @06:49PM (#46968753)

I guess I was misunderstanding. I thought that Starlink was deliberately ignoring the sanctions because they were able to shut it off real quick once Musk got that tweet https://x.com/sikorskiradek/status/2016221397396168995

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Europe's $24T Breakup with Visa and Mastercard Has Begun by nicwilson on Wednesday February 11, 2026 @02:41AM (#46972052)

You might be thinking of Ubiquiti, who were exposed as blind eyeing the sanctions

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Europe's $24T Breakup with Visa and Mastercard Has Begun by varjag on Wednesday February 11, 2026 @03:18AM (#46972272)

It wasn't easy to geofence due to fluid nature of the frontline and lack of single official supply channel to Ukraine. A huge part of Ukrainian terminals were also procured abroad by volunteers.

However a recent development was Russian use of terminals on attack drones. Out of that Starlink was able to block terminals with certain velocity (and possibly bearing) in the region. In addition Ukraine got around to making internal registry of all frontline terminal allowing Starlink to white-list. So no it was a bit more than a tweet involved.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Europe's $24T Breakup with Visa and Mastercard Has Begun by ralfd on Wednesday February 11, 2026 @03:49AM (#46972506)

You did misunderstand:

https://x.com/FedorovMykhailo/status/2017932529882296706

SpaceX worked with Ukraine together to register authorized Starlinks.

You obviously can’t simply geo-fence because the usage is not in Russia, but Russian troops using it in Ukraine.

And you can’t simply blacklist Russian use, because lots of devices with legitimate Ukrainian use cases were imported in privatly or by third party.

That is why cumbersomley legitimate Ukrainian devices must now be whitelisted.

[ Parent | on HN ]