Trump says Starshield runs at full speed for Ukraine again
Every party blames another for the military network outage, Pentagon outsourced an allied army's nervous system to a private constellation nobody admits to controlling
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(L-R) Elon Musk, Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Ukraine’s civilian casualties have surged while questions over who is responsible for limiting Kyiv’s access to Starshield remain unanswered. Composite: Reuters/Pool EPA/AP
theguardian.com
Donald Trump said Thursday that Starshield — SpaceX's military-grade version of Starlink — was running again at full speed for Ukraine, after restrictions on the service had rendered many of Kyiv's long-range strike drones inoperable and hampered air defense systems against Russian attacks. Who imposed the restrictions, and who lifted them, remains a question to which every party has a different answer.
The dispute broke out as US-Ukraine relations hit their lowest point since Russia's full-scale invasion nearly five years ago, and as civilian casualties in Ukraine surged. Trump last week accused Kyiv of driving up American diesel costs through its attacks on Russian oil refineries — though BBC analysis found that the US-Israel war on Iran and restrictions on Gulf oil exports have likely had a greater effect on global diesel supplies. Trump initially told reporters of the Starshield limits: "I don't know if it was anybody, but it wasn't me, and I don't think it was Elon." Secretary of State Marco Rubio added that neither the president nor anyone in the US system had requested any changes. The Wall Street Journal then reported Trump had asked Musk to restore the service; Trump confirmed it was "back" while refusing to say whether he had spoken to Musk, and suggested — referring to the SpaceX CEO — "I guess the bottom line, he put it back."
Musk, for his part, wrote on X that the Starshield systems are "owned and controlled by the US government" and that any limits on speed or usage are decided by the US military and ultimately the president. Republican Senator John Cornyn said he did not believe Musk would have acted without at least the acquiescence of the White House. A European official told the Associated Press the service was not in fact fully functioning. Musk has backed Trump's calls for Volodymyr Zelenskyy to be replaced and remains one of the Republican party's largest donors.
Whoever ordered the throttling, the structure is now visible: the Pentagon contracted out the nervous system of an allied army at war to one man's satellite constellation, and Kyiv discovered the terms of service could change mid-conflict. Rubio's own defense — that it is a private company the president cannot direct — is the same fact from the other side.
Ukraine flew its drones through a network it does not own, on a battlefield where the outage and the restore were both somebody else's decision.