SpaceX CEO Elon Musk pitched President Donald Trump on slowing Ukraine’s military Starlink service before publicly blaming him for it, The Telegraph reported.
Four people familiar with the talks told the British newspaper that the idea of throttling the system, which crippled Ukraine’s drone defenses, came from Musk.
One said Trump “agreed,” after which the Pentagon slowed Starshield, the military-grade version of Musk’s satellite network. The Telegraph said it had approached SpaceX for comment, and the Pentagon has not offered a public explanation.
The limit, about 160 kilometers per hour (about 100 mph), left Ukraine’s interceptor drones unable to catch Russian jet-powered drones and missiles moving at twice that speed, The Telegraph reported.
“So people were killed because not enough destroying, not enough interceptors, including interceptors with Starlink, which didn’t work, of course,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told British broadcaster Piers Morgan on Wednesday.
“Starlink connectivity at speeds of up to 160 km/h is being restored. Removing Starshield’s speed limit entirely is now critical for Ukraine’s defense. Thank you, @elonmusk. We hope for your continued support,” former Ukrainian Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov wrote on X the same day.
“Starshield systems are owned and controlled by the US government. Any limits on speed or usage are decided by the US military and ultimately POTUS. Starlink is a commercial service owned and controlled by SpaceX,” Musk replied, distinguishing the government-controlled Starshield from SpaceX’s commercial Starlink.
“He tweeted out that he was innocent and that it was the US administration that did it. The reality is that they were both in it,” a senior source told The Telegraph.
The same source said Musk grew worried about a consumer backlash in Europe after what was described as a “night of carnage” in Kyiv, the newspaper reported.
“As your European customers, we are watching you,” Polish Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski wrote to Musk on social media, according to the newspaper.
Poland has purchased Starlink services from SpaceX for Ukraine.
The order to slow the service came from inside the White House, two U.S. officials and a Western official told Reuters on Thursday. The move came as Trump pressed Kyiv to stop striking Russian oil refineries, the news agency reported.
The officials said Defense Department leaders received a message that the service “needed to be slowed.”
Ukrainian officials who called the White House, State Department and Pentagon were told it was a White House decision, a senior Ukrainian official told Reuters.
“No such request was ever made by the president,” a senior U.S. official told Reuters, though the White House did not answer whether other administration officials might have made it.
“Well, I don’t know if it was anybody, because it wasn’t me, and I don’t think it was Elon,” Trump told reporters at the White House on Friday.
“And I think it’s probably functioning, from what I understand,” Trump added.
Zelenskyy, who called the slowdown a “very dangerous and unpleasant surprise,” said Friday on the sidelines of a European Union summit in Brussels that service was coming back.
“Our defence ministry is in touch and my partners, they told me that there were signals from the White House that they would return these capabilities. Have they returned to the previous speed limits? No. But is it coming back now? Yes,” he said, according to The Telegraph.