Ukraine’s access to Starshield is expected to be restored by Thursday, after the US military satellite network was abruptly throttled earlier this week. However, questions remain over who restricted the service and what prompted the disruption.
Starshield bandwidth has begun returning following an outage that hampered Ukraine’s ability to deploy interceptor drones against incoming attacks, Denys Sienik, a senior diplomat at Ukraine’s embassy in Washington, told The Post.
“Starshield speeds have been improved, at the moment,” Sienik said. “We hope all will be resumed to the previous level.”
“Speed is critical for logistics and for intercepting the jet-powered Shahed drones, especially when Russia constantly uses them to attack our cities and commit war crimes,” he added.
“Yesterday saw one of the most massive Shahed [drone] attacks, occurring precisely when our defense system’s speed was being throttled, and the circumstances behind this are deeply concerning.”
Ukraine also relies on the US satellite network to help guide long-range drone strikes inside Russia.
Kyiv was thrown into turmoil Tuesday after its Starshield access was cut during a dispute between President Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Starshield is the secure military version of SpaceX’s Starlink satellite network.
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said the federal government owns and controls Starshield, adding that decisions to restrict its speed or use are made by the Pentagon and, ultimately, President Trump.
But a senior US official told The Post that Trump had not asked for Ukraine’s Starshield access to be limited.
Another source said Musk may have been mistaken in implying that the Trump administration was responsible for the shutdown.
The White House also told Ukrainian officials that they do not control SpaceX, according to Axios.
Sienik said Ukraine’s government has not yet received a response from either SpaceX or the Pentagon about the outage.
For now, it remains unclear who disrupted Ukraine’s Starshield access or why. The uncertainty has added to tensions between Kyiv and Washington.
