Who Ordered the Starshield Slowdown on Ukraine’s Military Starlink? Three Accounts Name Three People

Nobody has said on the record who ordered the slowdown of Ukraine’s military Starlink service, the satellite link known as Starshield, more than a week after Ukrainian receivers began failing on fast-moving platforms. Elon Musk says the US government controls the system. The Secretary of State says the President cannot direct the company.

Starshield is the government version of Starlink, the satellite internet network run by SpaceX, the company Mr Musk founded. Ukraine uses it for battlefield communications and to guide drones. Ukrainian officials told Reuters that the receivers stopped working when mounted on fast-moving objects, and a person in Ukraine’s Defence Ministry said on Thursday 15 October that they worked in motion again, but “only at speeds of up to 100 miles per hour (160 kph).”

What was actually limited?

Speed, not service. “Starlink was not switched off. The speed was reduced,” Volodymyr Zelensky told reporters in Brussels on 16 October, Kyiv Post reported. Asked whether speeds had been restored, he said: “Has the speed been fully restored to what it was before? No. Is the speed being restored now? Yes.” Kyiv Post’s own account of the effect is that Ukrainian interceptor drones faced caps of about 70 km/h while Russian turbojet drones fly at more than 400 km/h. The Wall Street Journal, as summarised by Asharq Al-Awsat, described the measure the same way: a cap on the speed at which Ukrainian equipment could connect, which made some of Kyiv’s drones useless.

Who says they ordered it?

No one. There are three anonymous accounts, and they name three different decision-makers:

Reuters reported that Defence Department leaders received a message that the service had to be slowed, and a senior Ukrainian official said Kyiv, after calls to the White House, State Department and Pentagon on 13 and 14 October, was told it was a White House decision. LBC’s summary of the Telegraph report quotes one source as saying “they were both in it.” Meduza’s summary of the Journal says the two men discussed the decision by phone shortly after the restrictions became public, that one source said they had also discussed it beforehand, and that “some officials say Musk acted unilaterally and Trump gave no specific order.” It also reports that SpaceX representatives contacted White House counterparts to agree on a statement. This publication has not read the Telegraph or Journal originals, both behind paywalls; the descriptions above are those outlets’ summaries.

What have officials said on the record?

Four denials, and they do not cover the same ground. A senior US official told Reuters: “No such request was ever made by the president.” Mr Trump told reporters, according to Kyiv Post, “I don’t know if it was somebody, because it wasn’t me, and I don’t think it was Elon.” Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth said on Tuesday 20 October, Asharq Al-Awsat reported: “We haven’t pulled anything back,” and: “Nothing’s changed from our view. We haven’t made any directives or anything like that.” Secretary of State Marco Rubio, speaking during a visit to India, said: “The president has nothing to do with the decisions that are made by Starlink and Starshield and by Mr. Musk,” and, “I’m telling you, there was no foreknowledge.”

Read together, the denials exclude a presidential order and a Pentagon directive. None addresses a request from another White House official, which is what Reuters’ sources describe, and Reuters noted that the White House did not answer whether other officials might have made one. SpaceX, the Pentagon and the Ukrainian embassy in Washington did not respond to Reuters.

Who controls Starshield?

The two on-the-record answers contradict each other. Mr Musk wrote on X on 14 October that Starshield systems are owned and controlled by the US government, and that “any limits on speed or usage” were “decided by the US military and ultimately POTUS,” as LBC and Asharq Al-Awsat quote him. Mr Rubio said of the same service: “That’s a private company; the president doesn’t run that company and can’t direct that company to do anything.”

Both cannot describe the same arrangement. If Mr Musk is right, a throttle on Starshield is a government act whoever suggested it, and the Pentagon answers for it; Mr Hegseth’s statement that the department issued no directive would then leave the order without an owner inside the government that controls the system. If Mr Rubio is right, the company can change the terms on which an ally’s army uses the network without anyone in Washington directing it, and the question of authority becomes one of contract. Neither SpaceX nor the Pentagon has published the terms under which Ukraine’s Starshield service is provided, and nothing reviewed here says who pays for it. This publication reported on Wednesday on a separate dispute over Patriot interceptors that allies have paid for and the Pentagon has not released.

Why would anyone slow the link?

No source quoted here says on the record. Reuters reported that Mr Trump has pressed Kyiv to stop striking Russian oil refineries, which he has blamed for high energy prices, and that at a 9 October meeting in Miami the US envoys Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff “struck a tough tone with Ukraine,” saying Washington was frustrated that the strikes continued despite repeated requests to stop. LBC places the Telegraph account in the same “energy ceasefire row.” No official has linked the two.

What is established is narrow. A speed cap was applied to a satellite service used by Ukraine’s armed forces, and it has been partly lifted. The company says the government controls the switch; the State Department says the government cannot direct the company; the Pentagon says it gave no order.