Ukrainian drone crews noticed it first. Military-grade satellite terminals on fast-moving drones stopped working on Tuesday night, cutting the link some of them use for guidance. Within two days, the question in Kyiv had moved from what broke to who ordered it.
Two U.S. officials and a Western official told Reuters that Pentagon leaders received a message saying SpaceX’s Starshield service for Ukraine’s military “needed to be slowed,” and that the message came from inside the White House. The sources did not say who gave the order or who carried it out. A senior U.S. official said: “No such request was ever made by the president.”
The same day, Britain’s Telegraph went further, reporting that Elon Musk asked President Donald Trump to slow Ukraine’s service. A White House official called that “totally false.”
What happened to Ukraine’s drones
The restrictions began Tuesday night, Oct. 13, and were partly lifted on Wednesday, Axios reported. Service cut out on terminals moving faster than 160 kph, about 100 mph, and in some cases above 80 kph.
That matters because of what moves that fast. Ukraine’s interceptor drones chase Russian Shahed attack drones, including newer jet-powered models. Its strike drones go after Russian troops and supply lines in occupied territory. Ukrainian officials said both were hit, Reuters reported.
“160 kph is not enough for intercepting,” a Ukrainian official told Axios.
Serhiy Beskrestnov, a radio-technology specialist who advises the Ukrainian government, said connectivity began dropping out when drones exceeded 160 kph,, ArmyInform, the Ukrainian Defense Ministry’s news agency, reported.
Former Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov wrote on Telegram on Wednesday that Starlink service “at speeds of up to 160 km/h is being restored” and that attack and interceptor drones “should be able to fly again.” He added: “Now we need to work on removing the speed limits for Starshield altogether.”
Before the restrictions, the networks worked on drones flying at up to 400 kph, Axios reported.
Zelenskyy: “a planned operation”
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has pressed the issue publicly. Speaking in Brussels on Friday, he said Ukraine uses Starlink “to intercept jet-powered Shaheds that strike our civilians and kill our families,” and that “when the speed was reduced, we were unable to intercept some of the jet-powered Shaheds,” the Kyiv Independent reported. He said Ukraine does not use the service for deep strikes inside Russia.
On Saturday he described a test. Cars carrying terminals in European Union countries ran at 180 kph without losing signal, he said, while terminals inside Ukraine cut out at 161 kph.
“The conclusion is that the restrictions apply inside Ukraine but do not apply in European Union countries,” Zelenskyy said, according to Axios. “In other words, this is a planned operation.”
He also told reporters that “today, our interceptors are not working because of the speed restriction,” Ukrinform reported.
U.S. officials initially pointed to a technical malfunction. A Ukrainian official told Axios that the company and its staff were giving Kyiv two different stories: “SpaceX as a company tells us it is a technical problem. But our contacts in the company say it is coming from the White House.”
A senior Ukrainian official told Reuters that Kyiv called the White House, the State Department and the Pentagon on Tuesday and Wednesday and was told the decision came from the White House. Ukraine’s chief negotiator Rustem Umerov spoke with Trump envoy Jared Kushner on Friday, Axios reported.
What Starshield is, and how it differs from Starlink
Starshield is SpaceX’s military and intelligence business, unveiled in 2022, the same year Russia threatened Western satellites supporting Ukraine. It runs on the same Starlink satellite constellation but adds stronger encryption, dedicated terminals and separate network gateways. SpaceX says it can also carry Earth-observation sensors and other government payloads.
| Starlink | Starshield | |
|---|---|---|
| Customers | Consumers, businesses, Ukraine’s military for communications and logistics | Governments and militaries |
| Network | Starlink satellites | Same satellites, separate gateways and terminals |
| Who controls it | SpaceX | The U.S. government, according to Musk |
| How Ukraine uses it | Communications, logistics, defensive drones | Offensive operations, per Axios |
| Terminal price (as cited by SpaceX) | About $5,000 | About $25,000 |
The Pentagon is Starshield’s largest customer and has bought dedicated Starshield satellites, including spacecraft for missile warning and a spy constellation for the National Reconnaissance Office, Reuters has reported. Britain uses the service, and New Zealand is testing it.
Ukraine’s Starshield access runs through a Pentagon contract. In December 2024, Bloomberg reported that SpaceX had won a Pentagon contract giving about 2,500 Starlink terminals already in Ukraine access to Starshield, on top of 500 already connected. Ordinary Starlink is much bigger in Ukraine: Fedorov said in September 2025 that more than 50,000 terminals were operating, more than 29,000 of them supplied by Poland, which passed a law that month to keep paying their subscriptions, Ukrinform reported.
Who decides
Musk pointed to Washington. “Starshield systems are owned and controlled by the US government,” he wrote on X. “Any limits on speed or usage are decided by the US military and ultimately POTUS.” Starlink, he added, “is a commercial service owned and controlled by SpaceX.”
SpaceX, the Defense Department and Ukraine’s embassy in Washington did not respond to Reuters’ requests for comment. The Pentagon has given no public explanation.
The Telegraph, citing four sources, reported that Musk asked Trump to slow the service and that one source said Trump “agreed.” Trump said he did not think he or Musk was responsible. “We didn’t slow down Starlink at all, and the service is currently operational,” a White House official told Axios.
On Capitol Hill, Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, a Pennsylvania Republican, warned: “If we start going dark on Ukraine there will be consequences, mark my words,” according to The Wall Street Journal. Ukraine’s top diplomat in Washington, Denys Sienik, sent lawmakers an urgent warning about the outage early Wednesday, the paper reported.
Not the first time
Musk’s control over Ukraine’s connectivity has been contested before. In his 2023 biography of Musk, Walter Isaacson wrote that in September 2022 Musk “secretly told his engineers to turn off coverage within 100 kilometers of the Crimean coast” to stop Ukrainian sea drones from attacking Russia’s fleet at Sevastopol. Musk disputed that account, saying the regions “were not activated” and that SpaceX “did not deactivate anything,” CBS News reported.
In February this year, SpaceX worked with Kyiv the other way, cutting off Russian forces’ terminals in Ukraine by moving to a whitelist of approved devices, Ukraine’s Defense Ministry said at the time, CNN reported.
Why now
The slowdown comes as relations between Washington and Kyiv have soured. Trump has pressed Ukraine to stop striking Russian oil refineries, which he has blamed for high energy prices ahead of next month’s midterm elections; experts attribute most of the price surge to the war with Iran and the largely closed Strait of Hormuz. U.S. envoys Kushner and Steve Witkoff pressed Ukraine over the refinery strikes at an Oct. 9 meeting in Miami, Reuters reported.
The administration has also defended a deal under which Russia will supply more than 2.25 million barrels of diesel, which the White House hopes will nudge Moscow toward peace talks. Zelenskyy called the decision “weak.”
Europe’s problem
The outage landed hard in European capitals that also rely on American space services. Polish Foreign Minister RadosÅ‚aw Sikorski, whose government pays for thousands of Ukraine’s terminals, wrote on X: “Hey, big man, are you playing politics with your products again?” and “As your European customers, we are watching you.”
EU Defense Commissioner Andrius Kubilius said Europe is “quite dependent on American space capabilities” and that “the answer to that situation is to develop our own capabilities,” Reuters reported. There is no quick substitute. The EU’s IRIS² constellation is years from service. Eutelsat’s OneWeb already provides some connectivity in Ukraine, but analysts say its terminals’ cost, weight and power use limit their use at the front, and Starshield terminals cannot simply switch to OneWeb. Germany is building its own military constellation.
What we don’t know yet
- Who in the White House sent the message to the Pentagon, if anyone, and whether the Telegraph’s account of Musk’s role holds up
- Whether the 160 kph cap is a deliberate setting, a partial restoration or a fault, as U.S. officials first suggested
- Whether the limits are temporary or tied to the dispute over Ukraine’s refinery strikes
- Whether other Starshield services Ukraine uses have been affected
Sources
- Reuters via Defense News: Order to limit Starshield for Ukraine came from inside White House, sources say
- Axios: Ukraine’s Starlink restrictions (Oct. 14)
- Axios: Zelensky on Starlink, Musk and Trump (Oct. 17)
- Kyiv Independent: Musk asked Trump to restrict Ukraine’s Starlink service, Telegraph reports
- Reuters via U.S. News: Europe has no quick fix
- Reuters via Military Times: What is Starshield?
- SpaceX: Starshield
Photo: 153rd Separate Mechanized Brigade via Wikimedia Commons (public domain). Top image shows a Ukrainian drone operator in July 2024.
