Ukraine Reports Restored Access to Starlink Amid Contradictory Accounts of Who Ordered the Slowdown

Ukraine said Saturday that it has regained full access to the Elon Musk-owned satellite system that is vital to its defense against Russian airstrikes, but with no more clarity about who controls the throttle than when the system was slowed down 10 days ago.“The Ministry of Defense’s monitoring systems are recording a recovery in Starlink/Starshield speeds,” Ukraine’s defense minister, Yevheniy Khmara, told reporters at Kyiv, according to news agencies. “We are recording speeds of over 400 km/h; the connection is stable.”Mr. Khmafa credited the restoration of the service — used by Ukraine to track and intercept incoming Russian drones and missiles — to “direct dialogue and the persistent stance taken by the President of Ukraine at the highest level.” He said the result was “vital for our front line, for our military personnel, for the operation of drones, and for logistics and communications.”There had been mounting diplomatic and political pressure for a restoration of the service, with the latest appeals coming from members of Congress and from Prime Minister Andy Burnham of Britain in a Friday phone call with Mr. Trump. But it remains unclear who made the decision to restore the service — or to slow it down in the first place — with both President Trump and Mr. Musk denying responsibility.Starshield systems, the military version of Starlink, “are owned and controlled by the US government. Any limits on speed or usage are decided by the US military and ultimately POTUS,” the billionaire entrepreneur wrote on X in his first and only comment on the issue on October 14, hours after the slowdown was first detected. He added that Starlink, as a commercial service controlled by Space X, “is limited to civilian or defensive activities and cannot be used for offensive military action.”Ukraine uses a combination of the two services, employing Starlink to communicate with frontline troops and Starshield to direct its drones and detect incoming missiles. The latter is funded by the Pentagon.Mr. Trump, for his part, has denied having ordered the slowdown, which came amid a dispute with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine over the American president’s decision to ease sanctions on the export of Russian diesel fuel. “I wasn’t involved, … I didn’t — I don’t know who did it. But I was not involved,” he told reporters outside the White House on Thursday.Contradictory news reports have added to the confusion. Reuters quoted two U.S. officials and a Western official on October 15 saying the order to slow down the service “came from inside the White House,” adding that “leaders at the Defense Department received a message that the SpaceX Starshield service for the Ukrainian military needed to be slowed.”But the Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday that the decision came directly from Mr. Musk, though it was unclear whether he had spoken to the president first. “Musk capped the speeds at which Ukrainian hardware could stay connected to the satellite-based network… rendering some offensive drones and interceptor drones virtually useless,” the Journal reported.Asked Thursday whether he had asked the Starlink owner to restore the service, Mr. Trump said, “I don’t want to comment on it, whether I called or whether somebody else called, doesn’t make any difference, I guess. The bottom line — he put it back.”Pressed again Friday, after Ukrainian officials reported the system was still being throttled, Mr. Trump said he had still not spoken to Mr. Musk but added, “I might have to, but I have not. I have heard it was fixed. If it’s not, I’ll speak to him.”Regardless of who ordered the slowdown or the restoration, the affair has prompted growing concern among some members of Congress over Mr. Musk’s apparent ability to make unilateral decisions that impact American national security interests.“We’re putting too many eggs in one company’s basket when it comes to our space assets,” Senator Kevin Cramer, a Republican member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, told reporters on Thursday following a secure briefing on Capitol Hill. He warned specifically against giving “one individual and one company” too much control over American military capabilities.On the Democratic side, Representative Pramila Jayapal asked in an interview with Politico, “What happens when one guy gets a giant contract from the government and then uses it to do something that shuts down communication in a war that has been extremely important to the United States?”

Ukraine Reports Restored Access to Starlink Amid Contradictory Accounts of Who Ordered the Slowdown

Ukraine Reports Restored Access to Starlink Amid Contradictory Accounts of Who Ordered the Slowdown

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