No directive from Donald Trump placed restrictions on Ukraine's use of SpaceX's Starshield satellite network, a senior US official has said. When a reporter asked whether any Starshield restrictions on Ukraine had been directed by the president, the official's response on Thursday was that no such directive had come from that office.
That statement left open the possibility that a separate US figure or agency had a hand in restricting Kyiv's access, while also pushing back against Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's assertion that Trump bore responsibility. Speaking to reporters during the week, Zelenskyy stated that both Trump and SpaceX head Elon Musk had acted to curtail Ukrainian forces' use of the technology — a move he attributed to a drop in performance among drone-interception units and, through that chain of events, to deaths among non-combatants.
Questions about who holds authority over the SpaceX technology deployed along Ukraine's front lines — equipment relied upon for battlefield communications, drone navigation, and artillery targeting — drew renewed attention following a service outage that has since been resolved. Officials and legislators across several countries sought explanations from both SpaceX and US authorities about the basis on which the decision to restrict the service had been taken and by whom it had been approved.
Zelenskyy and a number of European officials have since pointed to Musk as bearing responsibility for the Starlink disruptions, placing his earlier remarks under fresh examination. In a post on his X platform on Wednesday, Musk stated that control over speed and usage limits for Starshield — the military-configured version of Starlink that has become a key operational tool in the ongoing war between Ukraine and Russia — rests with the US military and, at the top of that command structure, the president.
Separate from the government-owned-and-operated Starshield network, SpaceX markets a military-grade communications tier under the same Starshield name, drawing on its own Starlink satellite constellation to deliver that service. SpaceX moved to limit access to its Starlink terminal network, a step reported through a broadcast outlet drawing on an anonymous insider, who requested anonymity so that details of an internal decision-making process could be shared.
In posts on X, Musk described Starshield solely as hardware owned by the US government, a characterisation that drew scrutiny over whether it accurately reflected his company's role. UK Health Secretary Wes Streeting told a broadcaster following his Thursday meeting with US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth at the Pentagon that the cause of the service disruption had not yet been established from the UK's standpoint, while Hegseth and Pentagon representatives had issued no statement on the matter.
Tensions between Ukraine and the United States deepened after Zelenskyy put forward an accusation against Washington, coming on the heels of a deal reportedly struck the week before between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin on diesel exports. The agreement drew objections from critics who view it as financially benefiting Russia while doing little to lower energy costs for American consumers.
Trump, who has directed the bulk of his public commentary toward Zelenskyy over recent weeks, told a television interviewer on Thursday that he holds an unfavourable view of the Ukrainian leader, pointing to Zelenskyy's decision to resume attacks on Russian energy infrastructure and calling on Ukraine to conduct elections that Zelenskyy has described as unworkable while the conflict remains ongoing.
Musk took to his X platform on Wednesday to call for Zelenskyy's removal from office. Separately, SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell stated in 2023 that the company had placed restrictions on Starlink's use by Ukrainian drone operators, noting the technology had not been designed for battlefield applications. About a year before that, Musk chose not to authorise Starlink activation near Crimea — a Ukrainian territory then under Russian occupation — and in a separate episode reportedly directed that the service be switched off, later writing on X that agreeing to the activation request would have made SpaceX directly complicit in what he described as a substantial act of war and an escalation of the conflict.
