Because they used middlemen in Iraq and the other middle eastern countries to get the terminals. It's incredibly likely that this has been in the works for a little while now. You don't wanna accidentally cut off access to Ukraine while clearing out the bootleg clients from Russia.

"There is no formal accusation that SpaceX is doing business with Russia directly - only that it might be failing to properly police redirection of its equipment to sanctioned entities like the Russian government."

https://www.theregister.com/2024/03/08/is_russia_using_starlink_in/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9rKu-1u2Le8

[–] NotMyOldRedditName@lemmy.world 4 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (1 children)

Higher ups in the Urkainian military said that there was a lot of soldier bought, and donated starlink dishes, and trying to do a country wide whitelist was complicated, and soldiers said they didn't want to report their dishes because they were worried they'd be confiscated for other uses. I'm sure civilians were worried about it as well.

Push came to shove though and they need to do it now.

edit: Like imagine being in some hell hole trench with a starlink you bought/donated and it's your only lifeline outside, and you're worried the higher ups are going to say, we need that dish for a seababy.

[–] how_we_burned@lemmy.zip 5 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

Having been involved in maintaining whitelists it's a shit of a job

Especially as you go through a zillion different iterations and systems.

[–] NotMyOldRedditName@lemmy.world 1 points 4 days ago

I bet. Making it life or death would only make it worse as well.

[–] Akh@lemmy.world 4 points 5 days ago

Trump controls the DOJ and secretary of defense. Of course there is no formal investigation