A senior U.S. official said President Donald Trump did not instruct anyone to curb Ukraine's use of SpaceX's Starshield. The comment undercut Zelenskyy's charge this week that Trump was behind the restriction, while leaving open the possibility some other American official or agency imposed limits.
Zelenskyy said the constraints dulled the performance of Ukrainian interceptors and resulted in civilian casualties because they could not down Russian drones as effectively. The interruption has been restored and has set off a heated fight over who calls the shots on the SpaceX systems being used on Ukraine's front lines for communications and military operations, including piloting drones and directing artillery.
A person familiar with the situation told Bloomberg that SpaceX itself limited terminal connections. The person spoke anonymously to discuss private decisions.
Elon Musk wrote on X on Wednesday that "any limits on speed or usage are decided by the US military and ultimately POTUS." He also posted, "Time for Zelensky to go." Trump, in a Newsmax interview that ran late Thursday, said, "I'm not a big fan of Zelenskyy," criticizing the resumption of strikes on Russia's energy system and pressing Ukraine to hold elections that Zelenskyy has said are not feasible during the war.
Speaking to the BBC following a Thursday meeting at the Pentagon with U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, UK Defense Secretary Wes Streeting said it was still uncertain what occurred or what caused the outage. Hegseth and the Pentagon have not yet commented.
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Starshield is a militarized take on Starlink and has become central to Ukraine's war effort in Russia. The U.S. government operates a Starshield setup that it owns, while SpaceX separately sells Starshield as a military-grade communications service built on SpaceX's Starlink satellite network. Control over Starlink-linked infrastructure rests with SpaceX, while Musk's posts tried to place accountability solely on government-owned hardware.
In 2023, SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell stated that the company had curtailed Starlink's use for Ukrainian drones, adding that the technology "was never meant to be weaponized." A year before that, Musk turned down a request to switch on Starlink near Crimea, which Russia occupies, and was said to have directed a shutdown in a separate incident. On the Crimea denial he wrote on X, "If I had agreed to their request, then SpaceX would be explicitly complicit in a major act of war and conflict escalation."
Zelenskyy's accusation comes on the heels of last week's diesel export arrangement between Trump and Vladimir Putin, a deal slammed by critics as propping up Moscow while doing little to ease high U.S. fuel prices. The Starshield restriction has drawn sharp reactions from governments and lawmakers worldwide, who are pressing SpaceX and U.S. officials to explain who throttled service and why.
For anyone watching their own wallet, the takeaway is simple: when battlefield tech depends on private infrastructure and political decisions, operational risk can spill into real-world outcomes for companies tied to those networks. Uncertainty over who has the power to limit or restore service is not just a Beltway debate. It shapes reliability, contract risk, and the reputational overhang that can follow.
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