The White House has told Ukrainian officials that it has no control over SpaceX and is not related to the restrictions on the work of Starlink in Ukraine. This is reported by Axios, citing sources in the administration of the US President.
Ukrainian advisers have spoken with representatives of the White House, the CIA and the Pentagon to clarify whether Washington has made a decision to limit satellite communication and how the problem can be fixed. According to one of the sources, the Donald Trump administration will contact SpaceX “to clarify what happened“.
The restrictions affected the work of drones
The problems began on the night of October 14. Ukrainian officials reported that the connection of Starlink terminals began to be interrupted when moving at speeds above 160 km/h, and in some cases - above 80 km/h. This made it difficult to control reconnaissance drones and interceptor drones.
According to the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense, the 160 km/h limit remains in effect, although the situation has been partially improved. The ministry said it was in contact with partners and SpaceX to ensure the stable provision of the service and to prevent sudden restrictions.
“Today we were subjected to massive attacks and it is a pity that we had difficulties with both Starlink and intelligence data“, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said during a meeting in London with British Prime Minister Andy Burnham.
Dispute over who controls the military service
Ukraine uses both the civilian Starlink system and the military Starshield. Ukrainian officials say the restrictions have affected both systems, with the problems complicating the performance of tasks with unmanned vehicles.
Elon Musk did not directly indicate the reason for the outages, but wrote that Starshield is owned and controlled by the US government. He said that restrictions on speed or use are determined by the US military and ultimately by the US president. Musk has said that Starlink is a commercial SpaceX service that should not be used for offensive military action.
Ukrainian officials suspect that the restriction was deliberately introduced to pressure Kiev to accept Trump’s request not to attack Russian oil refineries. The link has not been confirmed by Washington or SpaceX.
Reuters reports that SpaceX did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski also criticized Musk, asking if he was again using his products for political purposes.
Sources: axios.com, investing.com