The White House ordered limits on Ukraine’s Starshield service, officials say. A US official denied Trump requested it.
The order to slow Starshield, a satellite service Ukraine uses for battlefield communications and drone operations, came from inside the White House, two U.S. officials and a Western official told Reuters on Thursday. Pentagon leaders received a message that the service for Ukrainian forces needed to be slowed, the officials said, without saying who in the White House issued it or who carried it out. A senior U.S. official told Reuters, “No such request was ever made by the president.” The White House did not say whether other administration officials may have made the request.
Ukrainian officials said Starshield and commercial Starlink terminals stopped working when mounted on fast-moving objects beginning Tuesday night, interfering with drones that rely on them for guidance. Mykhailo Fedorov, the Ukrainian official who first asked Elon Musk for Starlink in 2022, said Wednesday that connectivity was being restored for users moving at up to 100 mph (160 km/h) but that removing the limit entirely remained critical. Kyiv was told after calls to the White House, State Department and Pentagon that the decision came from the White House, a senior Ukrainian official said. Musk said on X that because the U.S. government owns and controls Starshield, any limits on speed or usage are decided by the U.S. military and ultimately the president.
The restriction came as President Donald Trump pressed Kyiv to stop attacking Russian refineries, which he blames for high energy prices ahead of the November midterms. Reuters has reported that U.S. officials also threatened to stop giving Ukraine intelligence on Russian missile launches. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said this week that Ukraine will resume refinery strikes.
Starshield is the military version of Starlink, built on SpaceX’s Starlink satellite constellation. SpaceX introduced it in 2022 for government customers, with deeper encryption, and says it is used primarily by U.S. defense agencies. The Pentagon is its biggest customer and has spent billions on Starlink and Starshield, including dedicated satellites such as a spy constellation for the National Reconnaissance Office, Reuters reported in 2024.
Ukraine’s use began soon after Russia’s 2022 invasion. Musk activated Starlink in Ukraine in February 2022 after Fedorov’s request, and tens of thousands of terminals were provided through donations and U.S. government funding. In October 2022 SpaceX asked the Pentagon to share the bill, with Musk saying costs were nearing $20 million a month, before he reversed course. The Pentagon later contracted for the service directly. In December 2024, Bloomberg reported a Pentagon contract that gave about 2,500 of Ukraine’s Starlink terminals access to Starshield, in addition to 500 already connected.
This report is based on information from Reuters (via CNBC, Investing.com and the Kyiv Independent), Al Jazeera and Bloomberg.