The Starshield military communications system — the military-grade version of satellite-based communication network Starlink — is “back” in Ukraine, US President Donald Trump said on Thursday.
His announcement comes after the Wall Street Journal reported that the US president asked tech billionaire Elon Musk to restore the service vital to Ukraine’s defense against Russia’s invasion.
What did Trump say about uncapping Starshield for Ukraine?
“I don’t want to comment on it, you know, whether I called or whether somebody else called — doesn’t make any difference,” Trump told journalists when asked about the report.
“I guess the bottom line, he put it back,” Trump said, referring to Musk.
Kyiv is yet to confirm if the throttling has been lifted.
Relations between Washington and Kyiv have been increasingly tense of late after Trump called for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to be replaced after he criticized a US deal allowing more Russian diesel into global markets.
Meanwhile, Kyiv has questioned Washington’s support over intelligence sharing and speculation that the White House may have ordered the restrictions on Starshield.
The unsolved mystery of who throttled Starshield
Earlier this week the Journal reported that Musk capped the speeds at which Ukrainian hardware could stay connected to the satellite-based network. The move rendered some offensive drones and interceptor drones virtually useless, it added.
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The report, citing two unnamed sources, said Musk and US President Donald Trump discussed the Starlink decision in a call soon after the slowdown became public. One person claimed that Musk spoke with multiple senior administration officials, including Trump, before imposing the speed cap.
In response to that report, Musk had said that “any limits to speed or usage” of Starshied, operated by his company SpaceX, were “decided by the US military and ultimately POTUS.” Both Trump and then Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said that the Pentagon had not directed any changes.
Ukraine has not recieved a clear official explanation of who ordered the restrictions or why, a senior European official familiar with the matter told AP on Thursday.
US Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal on Thursday said he had opened an inquiry into the matter.
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