Intelsat Beams Lifesaving Internet Connections To Bombarded Ukrainians

When the Kremlin’s commanders began blasting Ukrainian cities and cultural centers, cathedrals and children with exploding missiles, the Western satellite colossus Intelsat teamed up with Help.NGO to rush life-saving internet terminals into the besieged democracy (Photo by NATALIA KOLESNIKOVA / AFP) (Photo by NATALIA KOLESNIKOVA/AFP via Getty Images)

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When Moscow started blitzing Ukraine’s cities and communications towers with exploding missiles, the Western satellite colossus Intelsat swiftly mapped out strategies to keep the country from being bombed into an informational black hole.

As the first Russian rockets blasted their targets, and Kremlin commandos launched a cyber-ambush on the American satellite operator Viasat, Intelsat joined forces with Help.NGO to rush lifesaving sat terminals into embattled Ukraine.

Help.NGO, equipped with Intelsat ground stations, raced to set up wireless hotspots in makeshift havens across the bombed-out democracy, says Brendan Harvey, the group’s executive director.

His detachment of internet- and satellite-tech wizards linked up displaced Ukrainians with Intelsat’s broadband beaming spacecraft “in town squares already subject to missile attacks,” Harvey tells me in an interview.

Dave Wasjgras, Intelsat’s techno-utopian CEO, tells me in a separate, sweeping interview that joining forces with Help.NGO’s rapid response teams to provide satellite-enabled internet kiosks in wartime Ukraine represented a high-priority humanitarian mission for the titanic satellite operator.

“We believe it’s important to support these types of missions around the world,” Wasjgras says.

Intelsat’s leadership rapidly green-lighted the campaign to set up internet citadels.

“People in Ukraine need support,” says Wasjgras, a prominent tech philanthropist. “They need our help.”

Intelsat’s goal in its alliance with Help.NGO was to throw internet lifelines to Ukrainians—including refugees fleeing the rocket barrages—as quickly as possible.

Help.NGO’s executive director says his tech squads sprinted to set up internet sanctuaries—sometimes within hours—“in communities hit by rocket fire outside Kyiv,” Ukraine’s capital.

Speed is of the essence, he says, when assembling ad hoc internet oases that doctors, firefighters and humanitarian aid providers can all rely on in the struggle to minimize casualties in ground zero sites hit in missile strikes.

Harvey says Help.NGO has forged a longtime humanitarian partnership with Intelsat. Over the last decade, they have jointly mounted tech-powered recovery missions across hurricane- and earthquake-wreaked regions along the Atlantic seaboard and in the Caribbean.

Together, he says, the allies rush leading-edge mobile technologies—like advanced, compact terminals that can fit into a backpack and connect with Intelsat’s orbiting satellites—that can provide high-speed internet connectivity to other critical first responders speeding to rescue victims across disaster sites or conflict zones.

Quantum leaps in miniaturizing satellite transceivers, and in simplifying their operation, are in turn cutting down the time Help.NGO technicians need to create each hotspot outpost, he says.

Today’s terminals are just one-tenth the size of their predecessors of a decade ago, Harvey says, and adds: “Now a ten-year-old could set up the terminal after watching a three-minute YouTube video.”

“We could set up an entire network of terminals very quickly,” he says, at speeds that reduce risks to Help.NGO teams and other humanitarian staff in regions where the missiles are still flying.

Adam Marlatt, Help.NGO’s operations director, says in a chronicle of the group’s quest to bring Intelsat’s broadband connectivity into Ukraine that every second counted as the Russian invasion unfolded.

When Kremlin troops and tanks began crashing across Ukraine’s borders in 2022, Marlatt says, Help.NGO was the only “UN Standby Partner” with an outpost in the region, in nearby Gdansk, Poland, and raced to “set up a hub for NGOs, UN agencies, and the private sector to collaborate, coordinate, and deploy assistance.”

“The invasion caused Europe’s largest refugee crisis since World War II,” he says, “with over 10 million Ukrainians fleeing the country and a third of the population displaced.”

“Hundreds of humanitarian organizations from all over the world, including UN agencies, began providing aid to the victims of the conflict,” Marlatt says.

Help.NGO aided refugees joining an exodus from the war-torn nation, while simultaneously providing vital internet communications for humanitarian leaders representing more than four dozen organizations, he adds.

“This includes providing connectivity to Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors without Borders) working to provide lifesaving assistance to field hospitals in Ukraine.”

Help.NGO also expedited the passage of UN leaders into Ukraine with hyper-tech Convoys-on-the-Move—next-generation caravans of cars outfitted with satellite terminals, and a mesh Wi-Fi network linking all the vehicles—to guarantee constant, life-shielding communications during the hazardous treks to the Ukrainian capital.

Marlatt says his group designed these futuristic internet-saturated motorcades to speed and shield UN Secretary General António Guterres across twin trips into Ukraine, along with “the visit by an International Atomic Energy Agency inspection team to the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant.”

Intelsat chief executive Dave Wasjgras says during our interview that Help.NGO has been incredible at heading the drive to swiftly restore internet communications for Ukrainians who are still facing aerial assaults via rockets and weaponized drones.

“Help.NGO is, for lack of a better term, the tip of the spear, and we are supporting what Help.NGO is doing for the civilian population in Ukraine.”

“We think it’s a very important objective and we believe that we’re doing the right thing on many levels.”

Bruno Fromont, Intelsat’s chief technology officer, praises Help.NGO’s tech teams for their speed and bravery in staging humanitarian operations in hotspots that erupt around the world.

“When something happens—you know, an earthquake in Turkey—they are there the next day,” Fromont tells me during the interview.

“They board the plane with backpacks with our equipment and our gear on their back. Yeah, they go in the country and their first objective is just provide relief,” Fromont says.

“It’s amazing to watch and you know, that’s why they’re very effective.”

“We’ve been working with Help.NGO for quite a while now and we have supported their efforts around the world,” Wasjgras says.

“Today we are partnering with them to support the population in this conflict zone of Ukraine.”

“So that’s like an ongoing thing,” he adds.

Wasjgras sketched out Intelsat’s philanthropic outreach to Ukraine’s blitzed students and doctors, priests and professors in an extensive interview on the eve of Intelsat’s recent merger with fellow satellite titan SES, which is headquartered in Luxembourg.

While humbly deflecting praise for Intelsat’s tech-augmented humanitarian expeditions across Ukraine, Wasjgras heaps accolades on his allies at Help.NGO and their high-risk operations in regions still being hit in rocket assaults.

“When there are situations where, you know, tens of thousands of people, or in this case, millions of people need support, whether it’s a natural disaster or a human driven conflict,” he says, “Help.NGO fills an important gap in supporting the thousands, if not millions, of people.”