>maybe everyone involved would have rejected the premium terminals

Sure, maybe they should have. Maybe that would have been much better for them. They're grown ups, I'm sure they would make the right decision.

I bet one of the issues is that there's actually too few of them. While Ukraine is fairly small compared to the US, it's still no slouch. The front was as long at one point as the distance between the northern and southern border of the US. A few thousand ground terminal in such a large area make what seems to be a sub-optimal number of ground terminals per base station. Normally the "non-premium" terminals would be oversubscribed in an area and the ISP would rely on usage statistics to determine the economic optimum, but here you might have a situation where the "non-premium" pricing may not reflect the service available (there may be more connectivity available per terminal, because there's so few of them) nor the costs incurred (the same amount of effort is spent on servicing a small number of terminals). The upside is that the ground terminals can each be shared by many people so it's not all that expensive per connected individual -- you're just splitting the costs at the level of connected individuals, not at the level of privately owned terminals.

Another good thread about how the terminals and subscriptions have been done from someone else whose been buying them: https://twitter.com/dim0kq/status/1580827171903635456

The terminals aren't the issue here hut rather the operational service provided to the terminals: the satellites providing connectivity.

That's correct, Starlink provided 3,670 of the premium terminals at their own cost, plus (so far) free premium service to all of the terminals provided as aid, including those bought by USAID and various governments. There are further consumer grade terminals individuals and crowd funders have provided entirely at their own cost including service.