SOFIA: Bulgaria is investigating a report that several antennas used for communication with the Starlink satellite network were deliberately set on fire, Prime Minister Rumen Radev said Wednesday.
“The investigation is extremely intensive. We are working with partner services to successfully carry out this operation,” Radev said in parliament, without confirming or denying the claim.
Ukraine uses the Starlink satellite system controlled by SpaceX owner Elon Musk for battlefield communications.
A Bulgarian opposition MP on Monday said 11 telecommunications antennas linked to the Starlink network were set on fire over the weekend “at a secret facility near Sofia.”
“The burned antennas serve as the main link to Musk’s satellites in space, which are actively used in the war in Ukraine,” Ivaylo Mirtchev, a pro-European opposition MP, said in a Facebook post.
“Two masked men set fire to 11 of the 17 SpaceX antennas used to connect to the Starlink satellites,” he said, without specifying where the information had come from.
A spokesman for the Sofia prosecutor’s office confirmed to AFP that an investigation was under way but said no one has been charged.
Bulgarian Interior Minister Ivan Demerdzhiev said tighter security measures would be introduced around similar facilities.
A fire broke out at a Starlink satellite communications station in central Poland in September, with the country’s digital affairs minister calling the blaze an act of “sabotage.”
German police have detained three men and a woman over the Polish blaze, which Prime Minister Donald Tusk described as an “act of hybrid warfare.”
Restrictions were placed on some Starlink Internet terminals overnight to Wednesday, a technology adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said, affecting Kyiv’s ability to defend against Russia’s jet-powered drones.