The announcement comes weeks after ICEYE and Nokia formed a partnership to develop secure, sovereign and high-performance broadband LEO satellite communications systems for governments, supporting missions from defense and border security to emergency services and disaster response. The jointly developed satellite communications systems are designed to give nations ownership and control of satellites, ground segment and terminals. The LOI with the Ministry of Defence was revealed during a visit by Finnish prime minister Petteri Orpo to Ukraine last Thursday.
The LOI also comes after last week’s news that LEO satellite operator Starlink has been throttling connection speeds for Ukrainian armed forces that use its military-grade Starshield network to operate drones. Starlink founder, Elon Musk and US president, Donald Trump, have pointed the finger at each other in terms who gave the order to throttle the network in Ukraine. Reuters reported last week that the order came from inside the White House.
However, in the context of the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine that started in 2022, both Musk and Trump have close ties to Russian president Vladimir Putin. Meanwhile, Trump has in the past few weeks lifted sanctions on Russian diesel exports and waived new sanctions against Russian officials, oligarchs, banks and state enterprises, whilst also pressuring Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky to stop drone attacks on Russian energy infrastructure and data centres.
In any case, the incident has highlighted the problem of governments using critical satellite infrastructure owned by foreign companies who have strong ties to foreign governments that may be hostile to their interests. “Ukraine needs secure, sovereign and high-performance satellite communications systems that it controls,” said ICEYE CEO and co-founder Rafal Modrzewski in a statement.
