Trump says Musk restored it, Ukrainians say otherwise: Starlink remains restricted

According to Donald Trump, Elon Musk restored the Ukrainian army's satellite access, yet Ukrainian soldiers and officials were still reporting restrictions, dropped connections and hampered drone operations on October 23. The Wall Street Journal, citing American officials, reported that the president personally asked Musk to lift the restrictions, while Trump himself first dodged questions about the phone call in public and then, the next day, claimed he hadn't even spoken to the SpaceX chief.

While the story keeps changing by the day in Washington, the connection that is vital to Ukrainian air defense still isn't working at full capacity. At the center of the matter is Starshield, the military and government-use network built on the Starlink satellite system. The restriction introduced on October 13 essentially means that terminals lose connection above a speed of roughly 160 kilometers per hour, which mainly affects attack and interceptor drones using this kind of link. The “speed limit” mentioned in news reports therefore doesn't apply to data traffic but to the movement of the connected device, so a fast-flying drone can lose the connection it needs for guidance right when it needs that speed to carry out its mission.

According to an October 22 report by the Wall Street Journal, Trump called Musk the day before and asked him to lift the restriction on the military service in Ukraine. The paper's sources spoke of a partial improvement but already indicated at the time that the system had not regained full functionality. Trump told reporters on Thursday that, as far as he was concerned, the point was that Musk had restored access, though he refused to say whether he himself had asked for it. By Friday, the president was already claiming that he hadn't talked to Musk about the matter at all, that he'd only heard the problem had been fixed, and that if it turned out otherwise, he would call and sort it out. When asked who had originally ordered the restriction, he replied:

“I have no idea. And if I knew, I wouldn't tell you. Why would I tell you?”

So the personal intervention is known only from press reports, and Trump's own statements were first evasive, then outright denials; yet by promising to fix the problem, the president himself reinforced the impression that he is able to influence the service's operation — which is hard to reconcile with Washington's explanation that tried to present the restriction as an independent decision by a private company. On October 21, Secretary of State Marco Rubio was still saying that Trump does not control the company and cannot order its chief executive around, yet two days later the president was already promising that he would talk to Musk if necessary and sort the matter out.

The suspicion that the restriction has a political background did not originate with Trump's promise. As early as October 15, Reuters reported, citing two American officials and one Western official, that the order to restrict Starshield had come from the White House to the Pentagon, though the sources did not identify who made the decision. A senior American official denied that Trump had personally given the order, and the White House did not respond to a question about whether another figure in the administration might have initiated the measure. A later Wall Street Journal investigation named Musk as the one who ordered the restriction, but also reported that Musk had been in contact with Trump about it. According to two sources, they discussed the matter after the restriction became public; according to one of them, it had already come up between them before it was introduced. Some American officials described what happened as Musk's own independent move, while other accounts point to prior coordination within the administration. The timing, in any case, is telling: the restriction appeared just as Trump was ramping up his attacks on Zelensky over Ukrainian strikes on Russian refineries and demanding that they stop.

Meanwhile, the service was not restored at the front. In a CNN report updated on October 23, Ukraine's chargé d'affaires in Washington, Denys Sydiienko (Денис Сідєнко), said as late as Friday evening that the restrictions were still in effect, while a Ukrainian officer reported dropped connections and higher-than-usual equipment losses. According to the chargé d'affaires, the speed limit makes it especially difficult to intercept fast, jet-powered Russian drones, meaning the consequences directly affect the defense of Ukrainian cities. In a Friday interview with ABC News, Zelensky likewise confirmed that the network does work, but remains restricted. This is especially awkward for Washington, since on Tuesday, after the talks in Oslo, the Ukrainian president had said the service would be fully restored within 48 hours. In the same interview, Zelensky also said that over the past three months Ukraine has received only 24 Patriot interceptor missiles from the United States, even though, by his own estimate, it needs an average of 350 a month.

The matter of Patriot deliveries is a separate story, but it weakens another layer of the same defense. In an October 19 investigative article, Kyiv Independent cited a senior Ukrainian official and two military sources who said that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had failed to approve the transfer of a significant missile shipment that Ukraine's allies had already paid for. According to one source, the paperwork was sitting on Hegseth's desk awaiting signature, and Kyiv suspects political pressure is behind the delay. An American government official denied this, while NATO stated that allied-funded American weapons shipments, including air-defense equipment, continue to arrive. So Ukraine has not been left entirely without Patriot air defense; the problem is the shortage of interceptor missiles, insufficient resupply, and delays in shipments already agreed upon, and Zelensky confirmed again on Friday that the promised interceptor missiles have still not arrived. The military consequence, however, is clear either way: the shortage of ammunition needed to defend against ballistic missiles and the satellite restriction hampering drone interception are together making Ukraine more vulnerable to Russian attacks. It only benefits the Russian army if Ukrainian interceptors lose connection or if air-defense batteries have to ration their missiles, and the contradictory explanations coming out of Washington do not make up for a single missed interception.

American lawmakers are now also demanding an explanation in the matter: led by Representative Gregory Meeks and Senator Peter Welch, six Democratic members of Congress sent a letter to Musk on October 23 and are awaiting a response by October 31. They are asking who ordered the restriction, whether it was coordinated with Trump, Putin or their representatives, whether conditions were set for Ukraine in exchange for restoring it, and who currently decides on restoring full access. Washington has yet to give a consistent answer to any of these questions. What is already clear from the Ukrainian accounts of October 23, however, is that Trump's claim about the restoration did not describe the reality on the front — as has so often been the case with demented Donald.

Ugar