The order to slow down Ukraine's military-grade satellite internet came from inside the White House, two US officials and a Western official told Reuters on Thursday.
Pentagon leaders received a message that the SpaceX Starshield service for Ukraine's military needed to be slowed, the officials said, without naming who made the decision or who carried it out.
Starshield is the military version of Starlink. Ukrainian officials said this week that the terminals stopped working on fast-moving objects, disrupting the drones that depend on them for guidance — slowing strike missions against Russian forces and hampering the interceptor drones used to bring down Shahed attack drones.
On Thursday, a person in Ukraine's Defence Ministry said the receptors were working again in motion — but only at speeds of up to 100 miles per hour.
Kyiv is not letting the matter rest. A senior Ukrainian official said the government called senior officials at the White House, the State Department and the Pentagon on Tuesday and Wednesday and was told it was a White House decision.
A senior US official pushed back to Reuters: "No such request was ever made by the president." The White House did not answer when asked whether other officials had made the request. SpaceX, the Pentagon and Ukraine's embassy in Washington did not respond.
On Wednesday, Elon Musk weighed in on X, noting that because Starshield is owned and controlled by the US government, limits on its speed or use are decided by the US military or the president.
The restriction landed as President Trump presses Kyiv to stop striking Russian oil refineries — strikes he blames for soaring energy prices ahead of the November midterms. The pressure campaign is part of Trump's wider push to bring the war to an end and keep energy costs down for American voters.
US officials have also threatened to stop sharing intelligence on Russian missile launches, Reuters has reported, though Trump said on Tuesday that the sharing continues.
The episode comes as Ukraine faces a reported shortage of Patriot interceptors — and Zelensky captured the mood in Kyiv when he told the Financial Times that when he asked Washington for more missiles, "your answer is blocking Starlink." The service is back up, capped at 100 miles per hour — and the weeks ahead will show whether the friction cools as Trump's push for a settlement moves forward.
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