- Ukraine’s defence ministry says Starlink and Starshield connections are stable again at more than 400 km/h.
- Hours later, Elon Musk accused Ukraine’s military of using Starlink for offensive drone strikes against the terms of service.
- Reuters has reported that the throttling order came from inside the White House. The Wall Street Journal says Musk gave it.
- Lawmakers from both parties want a formal probe.
Ukraine’s defence ministry said on Saturday that its monitoring systems showed Starlink and Starshield back at pre-restriction speeds. The connection, it said, was holding at more than 400 km/h. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the recovery started overnight.
Then Musk posted.
He wrote on X that Ukraine’s military had broken Starlink’s terms by using it for offensive drone strikes, and that the loophole was shut last week. He also pointed out that Starshield is a different system, run by the US government. What he did not say is who shut the loophole, or why Ukraine’s interceptor drones were caught up in it
The limits surfaced on October 14. They capped how fast drones using the network could move, and that hit the interceptors Ukraine uses against Russian jet-powered Shaheds. Zelenskyy said the service was never switched off. The speed was cut, and his interceptors were limited to about 70 km/h while the Russian drones came in above 400.
Other numbers are lower. Michael Kofman, of the Carnegie Endowment, told the WSJ the cap on Ukrainian strike and interceptor drones was 160 km/h, and that reliable connection was lost above roughly 130. I’d treat the two figures as describing different drones until someone from the defence ministry sorts it out. Even on the milder one, the Russians were 2.5 times faster. On Zelenskyy’s, nearly six times.
UPI counts the throttling at 10 days
Depends on who you ask.
Reuters reported the order came from inside the White House. The WSJ, citing US officials, reported that Musk ordered the slowdown himself, and that he and Trump spoke by phone soon after it became public. Some officials told the paper Musk acted alone, and that Trump never ordered any punishment of Ukraine. The Telegraph went the other way, saying Musk took the idea to Trump. All of this rests on unnamed sources.
Musk’s own earlier line was that limits on speed or use were decided by the US military or the president. Trump, asked directly, said: “I don’t know who did it, but I was not involved.” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Washington had not pulled back Ukraine’s access, and that the issue was the terms Kyiv has to comply with.
So the same decision has been pinned on Musk, the White House and nobody. At least one of those is wrong
Timing makes people suspicious. The trouble started after Trump announced a deal to buy Russian diesel while pressing Kyiv to stop hitting Russian refineries. The WSJ said both Trump and Musk had been angry about those strikes. Nobody in the administration has linked the two events. Kyiv and several lawmakers have.
A Reuters exclusive from October 23 adds some history. Six former senior US officials told Reuters the Biden and Trump administrations had several times asked SpaceX to turn Starlink on or off in various countries. Reuters has also reported that Musk ordered Starlink coverage cut in parts of Ukraine in 2022, in areas Kyiv was trying to retake.
For anyone outside the Ukraine story, the useful takeaway is simple. One private company’s decisions can change what a frontline unit can do on a given day, and governments have used that quietly. Some officials in Europe now argue the continent needs its own military satellite communications, since there is no short-term alternative.
Senator Adam Schiff has urged a Senate probe, calling the stakes “life or death” for Ukraine. No hearing is scheduled that I can find.
Zelenskyy also said earlier this week that interceptors agreed for defence against Russian ballistic missiles still haven’t arrived. That has nothing to do with Starlink. It is a second gap, and it did not close on Saturday
