British PM Burnham phones Trump to demand full Starlink access for Ukraine

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Andy Burnham tells Donald Trump Ukraine must have full Starlink access dailymail.com

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Prime Minister Andy Burnham told President Donald Trump in a transatlantic phone call that Ukraine must have full access to Starlink, the Daily Mail reports. The call came after reports that Elon Musk had ordered a slowdown of the satellite service, the constellation that carries much of Ukraine's military communications.

Ukraine's chargé d'affaires in Washington, Denys Sienik, said on CBS that access to the SpaceX satellite service remains restricted. Trump has claimed that Musk fully restored it. The president's account and the embassy's differ on the basic question of whether the wartime network is running as promised — and the embassy's is the one that matches the reported order to slow it down. Sienik appeared to discuss the access issue and the ceasefire; both, in different ways, are now managed out of Washington.

The call lays out the wiring of the arrangement. The constellation is owned by one company and run by one man who answers to no electorate. The instrument available to a British prime minister who wants the service restored is a phone call to the American president — who does not operate the satellites either. A throttle is not a sanctions decision or a treaty act; it is a provisioning choice made inside a private company, which the tempo of a war then has to absorb.

The rest of the week supplied the setting. The Kremlin accepted three-party talks with the United States and Ukraine beginning Nov. 10. A first tanker of Russian diesel set out for American ports. A ceasefire in the Russian-occupied city of Oleshky was arranged by first lady Melania Trump. The government that joins the talks, buys the fuel and brokers the truces is also the host of the network's owner — and the owner, not the president, decides the bandwidth.

Access, Sienik said, remains restricted.