Secretary of State Marco Rubio has again assured reporters that Volodymyr Zelensky’s claim does not hold — that neither President Donald Trump nor anyone in the U.S. government ordered changes to the Starlink service Ukraine’s forces rely on, and that Washington cannot direct a private company in any case.
“Starlink is a private company. They have a contract and terms upon how that technology can be used. We cannot direct a private company on the decisions they make,” Rubio said. “Trump or anyone in our system never requested that any changes to that system be made.” It is the second time in days the secretary of state has shut the allegation down, after Zelensky accused SpaceX and the United States of deliberately blocking Starlink in the middle of the night.
Zelensky made the charge in an interview with Piers Morgan: Starlink, he said, was “blocked by SpaceX and the United States” at 1 a.m., and “I am sure they knew what they did.” Ukrainian officials said restrictions had hit Starlink terminals used on drones traveling faster than 160 kilometers (100 miles) per hour, slowing battlefield operations as Russian strikes continued, and Kyiv said it had been caught off guard by the change.
Rubio rejected the claim outright on Saturday at Joint Base Andrews. “I don’t know what Zelenskyy said. I’m not sure Zelenskyy knows what he’s talking about, but it wasn’t deliberate. We had nothing to do with it,” he said. “Nobody in the United States ordered that Starlink speed be slowed down. It sort of happened, but my understanding is it’s been restored. It’s back to where it was before.”
Part of the confusion is that two different systems carry similar names. Starlink is SpaceX’s commercial satellite internet service — the one Ukrainian units were using. Starshield is its military-grade sister product, owned and controlled by the U.S. government under contract with the military, and Ukraine does not have it. Kyiv has asked for Starshield access to support deep strikes inside Russia — a request Rubio says is “under discussion right now.” Elon Musk has written that any limits on Starshield are decided by the U.S. military and ultimately the president, while commercial Starlink is meant for civilian and defensive use, not offensive operations. Ukrainian defense sources, for their part, told CBS that SpaceX imposed the speed restriction on its own.
Trump has also denied any involvement, and said he did not believe Musk was responsible — rejecting a report that Musk had personally asked him to cap Starlink speeds for Ukraine. On restoration, Kyiv’s signals have been mixed: Ukraine’s state news agency reported on October 15 that the system was working normally again, and former defense minister Mykhailo Fedorov said high-speed access was being restored and thanked Musk — but Ukraine’s chargé d’affaires in Washington, Denys Sienik, told CBS Kyiv still could not confirm the capabilities had been fully restored.
The Starlink row lands on top of open friction between Trump and Zelensky over Ukraine’s long-range strikes on Russian oil refineries, which Trump blames for pushing world oil prices higher. “All he’s doing is making the world oil price higher,” Trump said in a recent Newsmax interview. “Well, I think that’s a disgrace.” Through it all, Rubio’s line has not moved: whatever happened to Starlink over Ukraine, the White House did not order it — and Zelensky’s claim doesn’t hold.
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