SpaceX restricts Ukrainian military’s access to vital Starlink systems as Trump pushes ceasefire
The Ukrainian military discovered overnight that its access to vital Starlink satellite communications technology had been severely restricted amid the recent war of words between Kyiv and Washington, two senior Ukrainian government officials said on Wednesday.
Both Serhiy Beskrestnov, an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, and the country’s former deputy defence minister, Serhiy Sternenko, said that the new restrictions had disrupted several military operations due to be carried out the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) against Russia.
According to Beskrestnov, terminals used by the AFU to connect to the StarShield military communications system, a division of Starlink created to support national security efforts, stopped working when travelling at speeds exceeding 160 km/h. He also stressed that the Ukrainian military had not been warned about the introduction of the restrictions in advance.
While Starlink is designed for consumer and commercial use, Starshield is designed for governmental purposes and has various military applications. Both entities are owned by Elon Musk, whose support for US President Donald Trump has raised some eyebrows about how coincidental the timing of the new restrictions actually are.
Problems using Starlink terminals emerged in the aftermath of two Russian missile strikes on Kyiv earlier this week, which Zelensky said allied intelligence agencies had failed to inform him of in advance. On Tuesday, POLITICO reported that Kyiv’s allies had been unable to notify Kyiv about the strikes due to technical issues caused by poor weather conditions.
Zelensky and Trump have both separately since said that US military intelligence is still being shared with Ukraine, although Katie Zacharia, the president’s new press secretary, seemed less sure about that during her first press briefing in Washington on Tuesday, when she told a reporter that she would "have to get back to you on that".
