Trump Says Musk Restored Ukraine's Starlink Access, but Kyiv Insists Restrictions Remain
US President Donald Trump said Thursday that Elon Musk had restored Ukraine's Starlink access, but Ukrainian officials said on Friday morning they have observed no lifting of the restrictions that have hampered Kyiv's drone operations.
"He put it back": Trump's claim
"Bottom line, he put it back," Trump told reporters at the White House on Thursday when asked whether Elon Musk had restored Ukraine's satellite internet access. He declined to confirm whether he had personally called the SpaceX CEO, adding: "I don't want to comment on it, whether I called or whether somebody else called, doesn't make any difference, I guess."
The remarks followed a Wall Street Journal report earlier Thursday that Trump had called Musk and asked him to lift restrictions on Ukraine's use of Starlink. Citing US and Ukrainian officials, the Journal reported the system was working more normally on Thursday — though some Ukrainian officials said service was still capped, operating at higher speeds than under the cap but not fully restored.
Kyiv: "we are not observing any lifting"
Friday morning brought a direct rebuttal. "At this time, we are not observing any lifting of restrictions on Starlink," Serhiy Beskrestnov, an adviser to President Volodymyr Zelensky, said on Friday. He added that isolated cases of slightly faster speeds were likely down to the SpaceX algorithm or specific usage conditions, not a policy change.
Ukrainian officials say the restrictions, in place for more than a week, have disrupted military ordnance moving at high speeds — hindering interceptor drones defending against Russian attacks and upending operations in many front-line areas. Zelensky told CNN the Starshield military-grade service was not yet fully restored, and one source said speeds were "clearly not enough to intercept jet powered drones."
Who ordered the slowdown? Accounts differ
The origins of the restrictions remain contested. An earlier Journal report said Musk personally ordered a slowdown of Starshield, capping connection speeds for Ukrainian equipment. Musk wrote on X that any limits on speed or usage are decided by the US military and ultimately by the president; Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth said the Pentagon issued no instructions to restrict the service. Trump had earlier denied asking for curbs and said he did not believe Musk initiated them, while Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Wednesday that decisions about Ukraine's Starlink access rest with SpaceX and Musk — not the White House. Ukrainian officials noted the caps appeared last week, shortly after Trump criticised Kyiv and urged it to stop targeting Russian oil refineries. Republican Senator Thom Tillis is seeking an investigation into the episode.
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Photo: M. Lewinsky / NOIRLab / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 4.0)
Sources: Reuters via Business Standard; CNN; The Times of India.
