Belarus claims to have developed a Starlink analog for its troops

In recent days, there has been a smattering of coverage in state-run Russian media outlets about how the Belarusian army has developed its own satellite Internet service akin to SpaceX’s Starlink constellation, called “Kulisa.”

According to the TASS news service, for example, the Kulisa mobile communications technology has “already entered service and is being used in military units of the Armed Forces.”

And Pravda, which started out as the official newspaper of Russia’s Communist Party more than a century ago, taunted the developer of the technology, saying, “How’s that for you, SpaceX?”

This is a curious bit of propaganda, because Belarus, an Eastern European nation that is subservient to Russia and located just north of Ukraine, does not actually have a space program that launches rockets or builds satellites. Rather, the 15-year-old Belarus Space Agency sometimes collaborates with Russia and China on various space projects.

By contrast, the SpaceX-built Starlink Internet constellation consists of more than 7,000 satellites in low-Earth orbit—the product of hundreds of launches—that employ sophisticated laser-link communications and a network of ground stations around the world to provide low-latency broadband Internet from space.