Darya Serdyuk’s face, captured in her last desperate plea for help broadcast under the rubble of her destroyed dormitory buildlng, May 22, 2026
The Death of Dasha
“Nastya, it is flying! It’s flying, Nastya, I am scared!”
The face and voice was that of Darya Sergeevna Serdyuk, born April 18, 2007. An orphan, Darya spent her childhood in Saint Petersburg, where she was raised by her aunt.
And it was in Saint Petersburg where her cousin and best friend, Anastasia Shcherbak (“Nastya”) lived.
Around ten at night on May 21, the first wave of Ukrainian drones flew over the buildings of the Starobelsk Teachers College. The buildings consisted of five floors—the first three contained classrooms and administrative offices, while the top two comprised the dormitories where the students lived. The students lived under the constant threat of attack—air raid sirens were a common occurrence, and on one occasion a Ukrainian drone had crashed in the yard behind the dorm, and had to be dismantled by local emergency services. When the first alarm sounded, Darya took refuge in a hallway on the first floor of her dormitory building, along with the other students. She reached out to her closest friend, Anastasia, through Telegram, a popular social media platform, appraising her of the situation.
Around two hours later, after the first wave of attacks subsided, Darya and the other students were instructed to return to their rooms. They were told to go to sleep, and keep their lights off. Around ten minutes later, the sirens sounded again. The students were told to remain on their floors. Then a drone exploded in the adjacent parking lot, and the girls began to evacuate the building. Two drones struck the structure in quick succession, sending plaster flying and shrouding the students in a cloud of dust. That is when Darya used the circle video feature to tell Anastasia they were under renewed attack.
The next video sent a chill down Anastasia’s spine.
“Nastya, I am buried! Nastya, help me!”
And then a final, desperate posting. Darya’s frightened face barely visible in the frame.
“It has killed me, Nastya!”
Desperate, Anastasia sent a voice message to Darya, begging her to respond.
There was only silence.
Text after text, Anastasia reached out to her soulmate, desperate for a response.
“Dasha”
“Dasha”
“What’s up with you?”
“Go down to the basement and hide”
“Please”
“Dasha”
But Dasha was dead, killed with 20 other students whose only crime was daring to live a life in defiance of the Ukrainian nationalists in Kiev who had condemned them, and all other citizens of the Lugansk People’s Republic, to be terrorists.
The Ukrainian armed forces attacked Starobelsk with a total of 16 kamikaze drones, which arrived in three waves.
The first wave, according to eyewitness accounts, involved “jet powered” drones—more than likely Ukrainian-built UJ-25 “Skyline” drones favored by the Ukrainian military for medium-range attacks such as the one conducted against Starobelsk.
The next two waves of attacks were carried out using FP-1 drones, a slower propeller-driven aircraft-style drone which has become the mainstay of Ukrainian medium- and long-range attacks against Russian targets. The FP-1 is guided to its target by an operator seated at a terminal hundreds of miles from the intended target. The operator, using special thermal cameras, is able to see the target at night (human bodies in particular stand out, their body heat providing a stark contrast to the cooler surroundings), and guide the drone for a precise strike.
Darya Serdyuk and her fellow students were chased out of their dormitories by the UJ-25 “Skyline” drones, which were preprogramed to strike the fixed buildings of the greater Starobelsk College campus.
Then the FP-1 drones followed, specifically tasked with killing anyone who sought to flee the buildings. They did so by firing rockets into the buildings, and then circling around and crashing into the ruins for one last burst of murderous madness, all the while under the direct observation and control of their Ukrainian masters.
Let there be no doubt Darya Serdyuk and the 20 other students of the Starobelsk Teacher’s College were murdered by the Ukrainian drone operators in a cold-calculated act of terrorism.
The impromptu memorial to the 21 students of Starobelsk College, murdered by Ukraine on the night of May 22, 2026
Come and See
“I heard the second beast say, Come and See. And there went out another horse that was red: and power was given to him that sat thereon to take peace from the earth, and that they should kill one another: and there was given unto him a great sword.”
Revelations 6 is not a biblical passage that resonates with me on a daily basis. Indeed, the only reason I am familiar with it is that I have become fond of a Johnny Cash song, “The Man Comes Around”, where Cash quotes this verse at the end of the song.
“Come and See.”
These words came to me as I watched in silent rage as the United States and the United Kingdom, together with Ukraine, made a mockery of the murder of Darya Serdyuk and her fellow students, challenging the Russian narrative of what had transpired at Starobelsk and somehow implying that the whole incident was manufactured for propaganda purposes.
Tammy Bruce, the Deputy US Ambassador to the United Nations, declared that the US would not accept what she termed the “unverified claims” of the Russian government without independent verifications. Bruce is a former conservative radio host, author, and political commentator.
“Come and See.”
I was scheduled to visit Lugansk sometime in mid-June. I contacted my Russian hosts and told them that visiting Starobelsk was now one of my top priorities.
If Tammy wanted independent verification, she would get it.
I arrived in Lugansk on the night of June 8. I sat down for an interview with local media which would be embargoed for four days. I was operating under a strict security protocol which was designed to prevent the Ukrainian government, which had placed me on several “kill lists”, from having advance notice of my travels; my goal was to be far away from Lugansk by the time the interview aired on local television.
After the interview my team and I sat down for dinner. Air raid sirens sounded throughout our meal—Lugansk was under attack. We could hear muffled explosions in the background—“Ours”, the locals said, indicating the sounds came from Russian air defense.
But later than night, after we had gone to sleep, several loud explosions shook the building.
“Theirs”, one of my security team told me the next morning. Several drones had made it through the defenses.
The next morning we drove north out of Lugansk, toward the town of Starobelsk. The route was marked by burned out trucks and burned out gas stations, the byproduct of a massive drone offensive ordered by Ukrainian President Volodymr Zelensky in mid-May—an offensive which included the attack on Starobelsk College.
I was met at the entrance to the College—or what was left of it—by Inna Shvenk, Lugansk People’s Republic ombudsperson for children’s rights. Prior to her appointment Inna worked at the Lugansk Prosecutor General Office where she was focused on the observance of minors and youths’ rights and interests.
The Author with Inna Shvenk outside the memorial to the victims of the Starobelsk Teacher’s College.
Inna briefed me on the details of the attack, and about the personal stories of the victims, including those who died in the attack, and those who survived. She also described the work of the rescuers, and the impact this tragedy had on the families of the victims. Like all Russians, Inna was very professional in her presentation. But her eyes told a different story, red rimmed and glistening with tears as she recounted the various facts and figures that this tragedy had been distilled into. But cold hard data could not salve the pain that filled her heart.
Inna, accompanied by local officials from the college and region, then took me on a tour of the Starobelsk campus. We walked the ruins of the dormitory, and visited the burned out hulk of the main administration building, a historical structure that harkened back to the 19th century. There was absolutely no evidence to sustain the claims of the Ukrainian government that the Starobelsk campus had been used by the Russian military as a command center for the Center for Advanced Unmanned Technologies “Rubicon”, an elite Russian military drone unit feared by the Ukrainians for its role in hunting down and destroying Ukrainian drone teams. Neither “Rubicon” nor any Russian military unit were anywhere near the Starobelsk campus on the night of May 21/22, or at anytime prior to that. All evidence pointed to the fact that the Starobelsk Teacher’s College and the neighboring Starobelsk Professional College served a purely civilian purpose, making the attack against them a war crime.
Tammy Bruce had asked for independent verification of the Russian narrative.
I was now in a position to provide it.
My visit, conducted in relative secrecy, was beginning to attract attention from the locals, who could be seen gathering in clusters along the periphery of the campus, watching.
As Inna and I made our way down the street leading away from the memorial and toward the main building of the Starobelsk Professional College, there were two loud explosions from a distance of about a block and a half. I looked around toward the sound of the blasts.
Inna kept walking, nonplussed.
I looked over at “Shack”, the “fixer”. “Ours,” he said, implying outgoing artillery fire.
A few minutes later, the assessment had changed.
The explosions were from a pair of Ukrainian drones. The small size of the drones, which were apparently brought down by Russian electronic warfare teams operating nearby, indicated that they had been launched locally, most likely by pro-Ukrainian loyalists who had remained in place following the absorption of the Lugansk People’s Republic by Russia following the September 2022 referendum.
My visit had apparently attracted the wrong kind of attention, and my security team made the decision that we needed to leave Starobelsk as soon as possible. I thanked Inna and the others for their kind hospitality, and wished them the best going forward.
I was leaving Starobelsk.
Inna and the others remained behind. Starobelsk and Lugansk were their homes.
They had no place else to go.
The photographs of the victims of the Amariyah Bomb Shelter attack, February 13, 1991
The Screams in Your Head
In June 1997 I led a team on UN weapons inspectors into Iraq for a series of very intense, confrontational inspections of locations in an around the Iraqi capitol of Baghdad affiliated with what I had labeled the “Iraqi concealment mechanism”—personnel and organizations affiliated with the personal security of Saddam Hussein that were suspected of playing a leading role in hiding proscribed weapons of mass destruction from the inspection teams back in 1991-92. While the Iraqis had admitted that they had submitted false declarations to the inspectors, and had worked with the inspection teams over the years—including mine—to account for the various weapons and weapons production equipment they had originally tried to secretly retain, they refused to come clean about the organizations and persons that had been involved in the original effort to deceive the inspectors. They denied that personnel and units from Saddam’s personal security forces—the Special Republican Guard—had been involved in the initial acts of deception.
The mission of my team was to compel the Iraqis to come clean by proving that the Special Republican Guard had, in fact, been at the center of the concealment effort. The logic behind my investigation was simple—the Iraqis admitted they had hidden weapons from the inspectors. In order to verify subsequent claims of compliance after the fact, I needed to know how the Iraqis had hid these weapons. If I could not verifiably ascertain that the totality of the mechanism used to hide weapons from inspectors had been identified and subsequently verified as having been dismantled and as such no longer in operation, one could logically infer that Iraq retained the ability to hide proscribed weapons, and was actively doing so.
One way I sought to further my investigation was to focus on the communications used by the Iraqis to coordinate any potential quick-response capability that would be mobilized once my team arrived in Iraq and began its work. I had recruited a team of British signals intelligence specialists who operated a covert communications interception station inside the UN Headquarters facility at the former Canal Hotel. For more than a year this team monitored the entire signal spectrum of the greater Baghdad area. I would then carry out inspections designed to trigger Iraqi responses, and we would isolate those frequencies which developed a pattern of becoming active during these times.
This was called traffic analysis.
I would then overlay information garnered from imagery analysis, such as photos that the UN-controlled U-2 surveillance aircraft took of Special Republics Guard bodyguard units mobilizing their Mercedes Benz sedans to evacuate a site prior to our arrival, and photos of these same vehicles arriving at a different site in Baghdad.
I would then launch inspections of these locations that enabled me to establish a clear linkage between the Special Republican Guard and the Special Security Organization, the civilian intelligence organization involved in Saddam’s personal security. Through these inspections I was able to physically observe the radio-telephone equipment used inside these Mercedes Sedans as Erickson Mark 14 digitally encrypted devices, and link the Erickson devices to specific frequencies that my signals intelligence teams were monitoring.
I then worked with the US and Israeli intelligence services (the NSA and Unit 8200) to break the codes used by Iraq to encrypt these signals so that we could monitor their activity in near-real time.
The Mark 14 communication set was clearly linked to the highest levels of security surrounding Saddam Hussein.
And the Iraqis were using the Mark 14 to coordinate their responses to my inspection teams.
Our success in being able to pinpoint and exploit this vital communications node, however, gave me nightmares.
This wasn’t the first time I had come across the Mark 14 communications system.
In January-February 1991 I was stationed in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia as part of the intelligence staff working for General Norman Schwarzkopf, the commander of the US-led coalition tasked with defeating Iraq and liberating Kuwait.
I started the war as a simple battle damage assessment officer responsible for, among many things, tracking the destruction of Iraqi SCUD missiles. By the second week of February I had taken on a more operational role, working with various coalition forces to identify how Iraq was able to continue launching missiles despite every effort being made to hunt down and destroy their launchers.
We were very interested in the methodology used by Iraq to control the operations of its mobile missile force. Early on in the war a joint British-US commando team flew deep into Iraq to dig up a fiberoptic communications line believed to be used to send orders to missile units. A piece of the destroyed cable, along with the mile marker of the location where the destruction took place, were brought out of Iraq and presented to General Schwarzkopf to commemorate this action.
But the missiles kept flying.
The CIA had been tracking a particular location inside Baghdad known as Public Shelter Number 25, seeing if it was being used for command and control purposes. Sometime in early February, intelligence detected a new signal coming from the vicinity of Public Shelter Number 25 that was only used for Presidential-level communications.
This was the signal associated with the Erickson Mark 14 radio telephone.
On 10 February 1991, the CIA formally submitted Public Shelter Number 25 as a command and control target whose destruction was essential for the success of the military mission we had been given regarding the defeat of Iraq. This facility, located in the southwestern Baghdad suburb of Amiriyah, was assessed as being an alternative national level command post. Even though it had been built in the 1980’s as a public bomb shelter, and had been used as such during the Iran-Iraq War, the CIA assessment indicated that at the present time there were no indications that it was being used as a civilian bomb shelter at the time.
The kill chain for such targets is long, and their are many hands and eyes that have to sign off on a target such as this before bombs can be dropped. I was as low as you could get on this kill chain, but everyone who touches a target has a legal obligation to raise a red flag if they believe that striking the target would represent a potential violation of the law of war.
It is a constitutional obligation not to be taken lightly.
My job was to review the target and the weapons designated to destroy the target, and ascertain what constituted mission success from a battle damage assessment perspective—how I would know that the target had been successfully struck. If the attack failed to meet the destruction criteria established, then I would designate it to be re-attacked.
I had done this repeatedly throughout the conflict, and the processes associated with reviewing the target for strike had become automatic. Nothing set off alarms in my head.
And the association of the Mark 14 signal sealed the deal.
For me, Public Shelter Number 25 was a SCUD command and control facility that needed to be destroyed if we were going to stop Iraqi missile launches against Israel and Saudi Arabia.
We were in a lull between inspections. I had taken my team to a number a sites in western Baghdad affiliated with the Special Republican Guard, triggering the desired responses—an Ericksen Mark 14-equipped Mercedes Benz had been shadowing my team, and we were monitoring its signals closely.
I gave the team a day off to recharge their batteries before we would resume a final inspection push that would put us in direct confrontation with both the Special Republican Guard and the Special Security Organization. The Iraqi government had summoned me to an emergency meeting with General Amer Rashid, who was trying to ascertain the intentions of me and my team.
There were some in Iraq who believed I was targeting the Iraqi President for assassination.
I convinced Amer Rashid that my mission was singularly focused on those men and organizations who had been previously assigned to hide weapons from UN inspectors.
He seemed to believe me.
I was in the Canal Hotel, and I checked in with my British signals intelligence team to make sure everything was ready for tomorrow’s big push. I focused in on the intercept logs tracking the Mark 14 frequencies.
Everything was on track.
I then proceeded to the parking lot, where I climbed into my white UN SUV and prepared to make the same drive back to the hotel where I was staying, located on the east bank of the Tigris River that bisected Baghdad.
But something was calling me.
I pulled out of the Canal Hotel, and looked in my rear view mirror.
I had been deemed to be a national security threat to Iraq, to the extent that Saddam Hussein convened a special session of his national security council while my teams were operating in Iraq.
As I pulled away, I saw my “tail” follow in behind me.
I approached the hotel, but instead of pulling in to the parking lot, I continued. My “tail” had already pulled off to the side of the road in anticipation of my journey coming to an end, and I watched as the driver frantically pulled back into the street, following me.
I headed into central Baghdad, on roads I had often traveled with my teams, crossing the Tigris River on the July 14 Bridge, and driving past the Presidential Palace complex.
My “tail” was following, this time not even trying to be discreet. I could see the man in the passenger seat speaking into a radio, and I wondered what the boys back in the Canal Hotel would make of these communications.
I drove through the Mansur District, home to numerous facilities my team and I had previously inspected—the Iraqi Intelligence Headquarters, a Special Republican Guard barracks, and a Special Security Organization communications facility where I had been able to physically examine a Mark 14 communications set.
But these places did not interest me.
I was being drawn to another location, one whose memory had been haunting me for more that six years.
Public Shelter Number 25 was bombed on the night of February 13, 1991. Two F-117 stealth bombers, each carrying a special 2,000-pound “bunker busting” bombs, struck the target.
I had determined that if I could see evidence of bomb penetration combined with blast effect (fire, smoke) that the site would be declared to have been successfully struck.
I reviewed the strike photos, saw what I was looking for, and signed off on the target.
I then got on with the next mission I was preparing for.
Sometime later that morning someone came into the office I was working in and told us to turn on the television.
CNN was on the scene of a target that had been bombed overnight in the Amariyah district of Baghdad. Rescuers were pulling bodies from the ruins of a destroyed bomb shelter.
It was Public Shelter Number 25.
The death count was high—hundreds of victims, mainly women and children.
You could hear the cries of the women in the background as they brought the bodies out.
Those cries were still echoing in my head as I pulled off the highway and made my way to the Amariyah neighborhood.
I had come to confront my demons.
By this time my little excursion had attracted more attention. I had three civilian sedans now following me—Amn al Am, or General Security, who communicated on what was known as the “Yarmouk” frequency.
I parked on the side of the road opposite the ruins of the shelter, which had by this time been converted into a memorial for the victims—more than 400 in total—whose photographs lined the inside of the charred hallways where they had died.
I climbed out of my SUV, and saw that my Iraqi minders had exited theirs as well.
This was uncharted territory.
I was not on official UN business, and as such was free game.
If they wanted to grab me and give me trouble, they would be well within their rights.
I had not communicated my destination with anyone on my team.
I was truly and utterly alone.
Except for the voices in my head.
The first bomb struck the shelter, penetrating the thick concrete roof and detonating on the floor of the top floor of the shelter. This is where many of the women and children who had taken shelter were located.
Hundreds were killed instantly.
Outside the people who lived in the surrounding buildings could hear the screams of the survivors, many of whom were crying out for help.
Then the second bomb struck, penetrating through the hole created by the first bomb, and down into the lower floors of the shelter, where we assessed the command and control center was located.
But there were just more women and children.
And a water cistern that ruptured, filling the shelter.
In the fires that followed the explosions of the bombs, the water began to boil.
Eyewitnesses speak of a film of fat, several inches thick, which covered the water, all that remained of the victims who had been trapped inside the shelter.
On the walls of the shelter were the handprints of the victims as they frantically tried to claw their way out of what had become a death trap.
I stepped toward the shelter, and saw that the Iraqi minders began walking toward me.
Then a Mercedes Sedan pulled up.
It had a Mark 14 antennae on it, and license plates numbers which identified it as belonging to the Special Security Organization—Saddam’s personal bodyguards. A man dressed in a green uniform climbed out of the drivers seat, and signaled to the other Iraqis, who stopped.
I made my way to the entrance of the shelter.
By this time everyone in Iraq knew who I was. Before my team even landed on the ground Iraqi television would fill the airways with news stories condemning me as a CIA agent who was personally responsible for the continuation of economic sanctions and the resulting deaths of thousands of Iraqi children.
“Abu Azamat”, they called me.
“The Father of Crises.”
The Iraqis at the front of the shelter, a mix of men and women who were relatives of the victims of the bombing, stood aside as I approached. I could feel their eyes boring into me.
But all I heard were the screams in my head.
I entered the darkened hallway and proceeded inside until I could make out the photographs that had been mounted on the walls.
The screams grew louder, until I couldn’t stand it anymore.
I turned and walked out of the shelter, unable to muster the courage to confront the images of the victims of a bombing I had played a role in facilitating.
The Special Security Officer blocked my way, staring at me. He then stepped aside, without a word.
I made my way back to the UN sedan, and climbed in the drivers seat. I started the car, but didn’t drive away.
I just sat there, waiting for the screams to stop.
I was ashamed of myself.
Not for what I had done—it was war.
But for not having the courage to bear witness to the consequences of my actions.
Some 408 people lost their lives in the attack on Public Shelter Number 25.
They had names.
They had identities.
They had histories.
They had lives that should have been lived to their full potential.
And they were gone.
Forgotten by those who were responsible for their deaths.
The Author (center) poses with students and faculty of the Lugansk campus of the Leningrad State University named after V. Dal.
On my last full day in Lugansk I found myself seated on the stage of the Sovremennik Theatre of Leningrad State University named after V. Dal, located in downtown Lugansk, where I spoke to students and faculty about the tragedy in Starobilsk in the context of US-Russian relations. During the question and answer period that followed my formal presentation, I was asked whether the world would ever know the truth about Starobelsk. I was also asked why the Western media is covering up the scale of what happened there.
These questions shook me to my core.
I stared out into the audience, composed mostly of young adults who were the same age as those who were murdered in Starobelsk just barely two weeks prior. The Ukrainians were actively targeting schools, colleges and universities, and yet here these students were, gathering together in one place, fearlessly getting on with their lives, the constant danger of drone attacks be damned.
Once again, I could hear the screams of the victims of the Amariyah shelter echoing in my head.
Victims I had lacked the courage to confront and acknowledged when I had the chance.
Never again.
“I promise I will take your story back to America,” I told the assembled students, “and I will never forget what happened here.”
I spent hours talking with the students, answering their questions and exchanging points of view about a wide variety of issues. The experience was deeply moving for me.
“These young people are a living reminder of what we’re fighting for: the truth,” I told reporters after the presentation was over. “I will do everything I can to ensure their voices are heard loudly.”
“Come and See.”
I came.
And I saw.
Accountability
At least one Starlink Mini terminal that had been modified for Global Navigation Satellite System operations was recovered from the scene of the Starobelsk attack.
The Starlink Mini is a commercially available technology that can be adapted for use on mobile platforms, such as vehicles and aircraft. Ukraine has developed a range of technical solutions, including a lightweight Raspberry Pi module that turns Starlink into a reliable High Definition video and telemetry downlink for drones, that in effect weaponize Starlink in a manner which appears to violate the Acceptable Use Policy all users are obliged to comply with.
“Starlink,” this policy notes, “is not designed or intended for use with or in offensive or defensive weaponry or other comparable end-uses. Custom modifications of the Starlink Kits or Services for military end-uses or military end-users may transform the items into products controlled under U.S. export control laws, specifically the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) (22 C.F.R. §§ 120-130) or the Export Administration Regulations (EAR) (15 C.F.R. §§ 730-774) requiring authorizations from the United States government for the export, support, or use outside the United States.”
The militarization of SpaceX is a well-documented fact, especially when it comes to its relationship with Ukraine. In December 2024 SpaceX was awarded has been a multi-million dollar Pentagon contract to provide Ukraine access to a more secure, militarized version of its Starlink satellite network known as Starshield.
Starshield is a classified modification to the Starlink system which broadcasts an encrypted signal over Starlink that’s more difficult to hack into or jam. The Pentagon contract provided for some 3,000 Starshield-enable terminals to be provided to Ukraine.
In theory, this contact would resolve the issues raised in the Starlink Acceptable Use Policy.
But there is a glitch.
The Starlink Mini recovered at Starobelsk is a commercially available model, not a classified Starshield terminal. In short, Ukraine would not be permitted to use a Starshield-capable terminal on a kamikaze drone if for no other reason that there is a chance the drone would fall into Russian hands intact, or in the form of debris capable of being reverse-engineered by Russian technical intelligence specialists. This is the same problem faced by the US when employing its own Low-cost Uncrewed Combat Attack System (LUCAS) drone against Iran—it turns out that the US military made use of commercial Starlink technology instead of the classified Starshield technology.
“It is a violation of commercial Starlink terms of service to use the terminal for weapon systems. This applies to all users and is shut down when discovered,” Elon Musk noted when it was discovered the US military was using Starlink technology on LUCAS. “There is a separate network called Starshield, which is operated by the US government. This is not under SpaceX control.”
There can be no doubt that Ukraine’s use of heavily-modified off-the-shelf commercial Starlink products violates prohibitions set for in Starlink’s Acceptable Use Policy.
There is another issue as well—the kind of subscription service being provided to Ukraine for use with the Starlink Mini. Starlink offers an aviation tier subscription—to the tune of $25,000 a month—in addition to a lower priced land or mobility service, which costs around $5,000 a month. The US military, when it came to the operation of LUCAS, was only paying the $5,000 fee, claiming that to pay $25,000 for one-time use was absurd.
Absurd, yes.
But the US was in violation of the terms of its contract, and was eventually compelled to pay the higher fee.
Which brings us back to Ukraine and the use of Starlink by the drones that murdered the students of Starobelsk College.
There can be no doubt that the Ukrainian use—like the use by the US military when it came to LUCAS—violated Starlink’s Acceptable Use Policy, both in terms of using Starlink for military purposes and for violating subscription terms.
These violations are grounds for termination of any existing agreement between Starlink and Ukraine, whether direct or indirect, through the Pentagon.
It is not as though the Starobelsk incident was a wakeup call for Elon Musk and Starlink. Back in February 2026, it was discovered that Russia was making use of Starlink terminals for its own drones, tapping in on the Starlink connectivity inherent in the existing contractual relationship between Starlink and Ukraine.
The solution to this obvious violation of terms was not to shut down Ukraine’s access to Starlink, but rather to fabricate work-arounds that limited Russia’s access while enabling—by design—Ukraine’s ability to continue using Starlink to support its drone programs. In particular, Starlink put a limitation on the speed a drone could fly—75 miles per hour—thereby blocking Russia’s faster drones while creating an operational window for Ukrainian drones such as the FP-1/2, which usually fly at speeds around 15-20 miles per hour.
As such, Starlink knowingly enabled Ukraine to continue operating illegally-modified Starlink terminals in support of offensive military operations that directly violated Starlink’s terms of service, thereby clearing the way for Ukraine’s use of Starlink-enabled FP-1/2 drones against the Starobelsk Teacher’s College on May 22, 2026.
But Starlink and Elon Musk have done far worse than simply turning a blind eye to violations of their internal company policies. There can be no doubt that the intent behind the provision of Starlink technology to Ukraine is to enhance the military performance of the Ukrainian armed forces.
Both Starlink and Elon Musk appear to have committed a federal crime, namely to have violated 18 U.S. Code § 2339A (Providing material support to terrorists) by providing property and services, training, expert advise and assistance, to the government of Ukraine that facilitated the attack on Starobelsk.
And there can be no doubt that the attack on Starobelsk qualifies as an act of international terrorism, insofar as it involved violent acts that would be a criminal violation if committed within the jurisdiction of the United States or of any State, and which appear to be intended to intimidate or coerce a civilian population, to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; and to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, which occur primarily outside the territorial jurisdiction of the United States. In short, the use by Ukraine of Starlink in support of its terroristic attack on Starobelsk should trigger US arms transfer prohibitions, federal terrorism prosecutions, and international counterterrorism measures.
The fact that none of these actions are taking place or even being considered speaks volumes about the moral compass of the United States when it comes to the enforcement of its own laws.
I hope Elon Musk is haunted by the ghosts of Starobelsk.
I want every employee of SpaceX who participates in the manufacture of Starlink terminals to be haunted as well.
They are all complicit in the murders of the 21 innocent students of Starobelsk.
The screams of the grieving parents called upon to identify the crushed and burned bodies of their children should echo endlessly in the minds of those who manufacture weapons of death with little or no concern for the consequences of their labor.
May the last thing Elon Musk hears at night is the frantic voice of Darya Serdyuk.
“Nastya, I am buried! Nastya, help me!”
“It has killed me, Nastya!”
(This article is the second in a series I am doing about my recent travels to the Donbas and Zaporizhia. This trip was made possible through the generous donations of readers and supporters. Future visits to Russia intended to capture the reality of that land and its people and bring it back to an American audience are being planned. Please consider donating so this important work can continue.)