Does China have a plan to destroy Starlink, the low-earth orbit satellite system which provides internet connectivity to tens of millions of people – including Ukraine’s military? That is just one of the extraordinary revelations in a year-long investigation by the Insider, Der Spiegel, and Le Monde. Their report is based on a set of power-point presentations from a secret 2023 Russo-Chinese military conference, as well as a working protocol from negotiations held in Moscow in June 2023, that were leaked last year to the German magazine Der Spiegel. This confidential material appears to provide detailed evidence that military cooperation between Moscow and Beijing is far closer and deeper than previously understood.
The Starlink-killing plan was presented to a delegation of Russian military officers and civilian defence experts in November 2023
Most shockingly of all, the investigation – corroborated by a slew of senior Western military experts – shows that Russia and China have jointly developed next-generations weapons and that China has effectively battle-tested its military technologies in the field in Ukraine.
‘From air- and missile-defense systems to AI-enhanced drone capabilities, cooperation between Moscow and Beijing is allowing Russian forces to keep pace with Ukrainian innovations while China gains the opportunity to test its wares under combat conditions,’ the report says.
