On September 15, local time, the Ministry of Economy, Environment and Agriculture of Ukraine announced that Ukraine and the EU in Brussels completed the review meeting on the "Agriculture and Rural Development" chapter, which is also the final topic of Ukraine's accession to the EU negotiations, marking the completion of the review phase.

Image Source: Visual China

According to reports, during the three-day conference, Ukraine introduced 28 topics such as agricultural reform, digital progress, state support, market supervision and agricultural development, and reported on the connection between domestic legislation and EU laws in financial and administrative structure, agricultural market, quality policy, organic production and agricultural product promotion.

Ukrainian Deputy Minister of Economy Bashlik said that Ukraine has made positive progress in pushing agricultural policies closer to EU standards, but there is still a lot of work to be done in the future. He stressed that the process of joining the European Union requires the joint efforts and close coordination of both sides, and Ukraine is willing to continue to push forward.

According to another reference news, the Singaporean "Lianhe Zaobao" website quoted Reuters on September 15 as saying that American billionaire Musk's satellite Internet service "Starlink" was briefly interrupted on the 15th, and the service of most users has been restored.

As of 1:15 am (Beijing time 1:15 pm), the number of U.S. users reporting the issue has fallen from the peak of about 43,000 people, to less than 1,000.

The StarChain website an interruption earlier on the 15th, but did not provide details, just saying: ¡°StarChain service is currently interrupted.

Ukrainian drone force commander Browdy said the interruption of the "Star Chain" began at 7:28 p.m. local time (12:28 p.m. Beijing time) and affected the entire front with Russia.

Ukrainian military cannot use the "star chain" service

Browcy wrote on the Telegram social platform: ¡°There has been another global disruption,¡± adding that the service resumed after about half an hour.

The Ukrainian army relies heavily on the ¡°Star Chain¡± terminal for battlefield communications and partial drone operations. According to officials, there are currently more than 50,000 terminals in operation in Ukraine.

The "Star Chain" provides Internet services through a series of low Earth orbit satellites, widely used in remote areas and conflict areas.

According to CCTV News, on the 15th local time, the Russian Ministry of Defense issued a battle report stating that the Russian army took control of the Oligovskoye settlement in the Zaporizhzhia region. In the past day, various Russian army groups continued to attack Ukrainian military personnel and equipment in Sumy, Kharkiv, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia, Kherson and other directions.

On the same day, the General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces reported that as of 10 p.m. that day, a total of 173 battles had taken place in the frontline areas. The Ukrainian army repelled multiple Russian attacks in Liman, Toretsk, Pokrovsk and other directions.

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Ukraine complains: It is tired of our front lines

According to Xinhua News Agency, the satellite Internet system "Starlink" owned by SpaceX broke down on July 24th, and about 61,000 users in many places around the world were disconnected. The company said a few hours later that it had restored service and thoroughly investigated the cause of the failure.

On the 25th local time, Robert Brovdi, commander of the Ukrainian drone force, said that the "Starlink" system used by the Ukrainian military was interrupted for two and a half hours from the evening of the 24th to the early morning of the 25th.

¡°The entire system of the front line has been paralyzed,¡± Browdie wrote on the social media platform Telegram on the evening of the 24th, ¡°the operational mission was conducted without (video) signal vision, while the field reconnaissance was completed by relying on the attack (drone).¡±

Brovdi said the incident highlighted the risks of the Ukrainian military¡¯s excessive reliance on the ¡°star chain¡± system, and called for diversification in ways of communicating and connecting.

Alexander Dmitriev, founder of Ukrainian nonprofit digital system OCHI, said the disruption showed "significant risks" in relying on cloud services to command troops and transmit battlefield drone reconnaissance data. He pointed out that "if the Internet connection is interrupted, the combat capability will be almost completely lost" and called on the Ukrainian military to switch to a local communication system that does not rely on the Internet.

Andrei Kovalenko, director of the Anti-Disinformation Center of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine, responded on the 25th that the interruption of the operation of the "Starlink" not only occurred in Ukraine, but also in the "Starlink" of some other countries around the world.

Ukrainian soldiers deploy "star chain" equipment on the frontline.

Data from the network malfunction tracking platform "Network Detector" website showed that the breakdown began at around 3 a.m. on the east of the U.S. time on the 24th (Beijing time on the 25th) and a total of approximately 61,000 users in the U.S., Europe and other regions a "star chain" network disruption.

Michael Nichols, vice president of Starlink Engineering, said later that the disconnection lasted about two and a half hours and has basically recovered.

According to Nichols, the interruption was caused by a "failure of the key internal software services running the core network" and he apologized to users for the interruption and promised to thoroughly investigate the cause of the failure "to ensure that such events do not happen again".

SpaceX founder Musk also tweeted on the social media platform X on the 24th, saying he was "sorry for the network breakdown."

Starlink responds to the cause of the accident

The "Star Chain" is a system developed and operated by the American space exploration technology company, providing high-speed internet connectivity through a large number of low-orbit satellites.

According to the report, the Ukrainian military relies heavily on tens of thousands of "star chain" terminals for battlefield communications and partial drone operations, which in the last three and a half years of combat have demonstrated their ability to resist interference and signal interference.

Despite the fact that StarChain does not operate in Russia, Ukrainian officials said the system was widely used by Russian troops on the front lines as well. Musk responded last year that the company had never sold a StarChain terminal to Russia. An analysis said new users had to be authenticated to use the StarChain service, so the Russian military could have taken the StarChain terminal from Ukrainian soldiers.

It is worth mentioning that since the beginning of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, the "star chain" service has been a political problem.

In early October 2022, Musk urged the Russian conflict to end as soon as possible, while proposing the independence of the eastern region and declaring Ukraine neutral. The proposal was strongly blamed by Ukrainian officials, while the media exposed Musk's letter to the U.S. military in September of the same year, asking the Pentagon to pay for Ukrainian military "star chain" services.

Earlier it was that Musk¡¯s threat to shut down the ¡°Star Chain¡± incident disappointed the Pentagon very much. Soon after, Musk¡¯s attitude changed 180 times, saying SpaceX would continue to fund its ¡°Star Chain¡± project in Ukraine ¡°and regret losing money.¡±

In September 2023, a biography of Musk revealed that Musk had ordered the closure of the "Starlink" service near Crimea, which led to the failed attack of Ukrainian unmanned boats on Russian warships. Musk responded that Ukraine had urgently requested to activate the "Starlink" leading to Sevastopol Port, with the intention of sinking most of the Russian warships moored here. "If I agree, then SpaceX will be complicit in a major war and escalation of conflict."