Over the past few days, a verbal clash and scandal have erupted between the administration of US President Donald Trump, representatives of the authorities in Kyiv and billionaire Elon Musk over who is to blame for restricting Ukraine’s access to the version of Starlink developed by SpaceX for military purposes.
According to Ukrainian officials, restrictions on the Starshield system have rendered many of the drones Kyiv uses to strike targets behind the front line unusable and have hampered the operation of the air defence systems that intercept Russian attacks, The Guardian writes in an analysis.
Earlier last week, Donald Trump said that the service was once again operating at full capacity, but a European official who spoke to the Associated Press denied that it was functioning fully. Against the backdrop of diplomatic concern, the number of civilian casualties in Ukraine has risen sharply, while the question of who ultimately bears responsibility for restricting Kyiv’s access remains unanswered.
Donald Trump
Restrictions on the Starlink version were introduced at a time when relations between the US and Ukraine had reached their lowest point since the start of the full-scale Russian invasion nearly five years ago. Donald Trump did not miss the opportunity to accuse Ukraine of causing diesel fuel prices for Americans to rise through its attacks on Russian oil refineries.
A BBC analysis shows that the confrontation between the US and Israel and Iran, as well as the resulting restrictions on oil exports from the Persian Gulf region, likely had a more significant impact on global diesel supplies. Trump initially denied having any responsibility for the changes to the “Starshield” system.
Last week, Trump told reporters waiting for him outside the White House that he did not know whether anyone else was behind the problem. “It wasn’t me, and I don’t think it was Elon either,” the US president said, referring to Elon Musk, SpaceX’s chief executive.
Trump’s team stood behind him and his words, with Secretary of State Marco Rubio confirming the president’s position on Wednesday: “I can say with certainty that neither the president of the United States nor anyone else in our administration asked for any changes to be made to this system.” Rubio, however, also made a comment that directed suspicions towards Musk, the richest man in the world.
“Trump has nothing to do with the decisions made by Starlink and Starshield, or by Mr Elon Musk. This is a private company. The president does not run this company and cannot order it to do anything,” Rubio said.
The Wall Street Journal reported that the US president had asked Musk to restore the service, with Trump later telling reporters that the system was “back online”. He declined to comment on whether he had spoken with Musk, but suggested that the final decision to restrict the service rested with SpaceX’s chief executive.
“Ultimately, he brought it back,” Trump said, referring to Musk. John Cornyn, a Republican who is spending his final weeks as a US senator representing the state of Texas, told US media that he believed Musk was unlikely to have taken such action “without at least the tacit consent of the White House.”
Elon Musk
Musk supported Trump’s calls for Volodymyr Zelensky’s removal and levelled sharp criticism at the Ukrainian president. Nevertheless, he was quick to attribute the restrictions on the “Starshield” system to the Trump administration, writing on the X platform last week that these systems are “owned and controlled by the US government.”
All restrictions on speed or usage are determined by the US military and ultimately by the US president. Musk, one of the Republican Party’s biggest donors and a Trump ally, continued to deny responsibility for the changes. Nevertheless, the Wall Street Journal reported that it was Musk who ordered the slowdown of “Starshield”, while the publication’s sources differed on whether this had been coordinated with Trump.
US Vice President JD Vance defended Musk, saying that the billionaire “doesn’t want to find himself in the middle of a war between two countries without the US government explicitly telling him exactly what to do.” Therefore, I don’t think this is about Elon. I believe the issue at the heart of everything is what America’s policy towards Ukraine and Russia will be.
Volodymyr Zelensky
The Ukrainian president initially attributed the restrictions to “SpaceX and the United States”, saying that the move would “lead to many human casualties... of course, people will die.” Shortly after the systems stopped working, Zelensky noted that there were no similar restrictions on Starshield terminals in European Union countries and that they applied only to Ukraine. In other words, this is a planned operation.
Over the weekend, Zelensky said that Musk’s SpaceX company bore ultimate responsibility for the sudden restriction of the speed at which Starshield operates in Ukraine. “This was a message from the US government—to limit the speed... And technically, SpaceX did it.”
Despite Trump’s claim that the service had been restored, a senior European official told the Associated Press that there had been no change whatsoever in the operation of Starshield. Before the US president’s comments, Zelensky said that Starshield’s full speed for Ukraine had still not been restored, adding that he hoped to hold talks with Rubio in the coming days.
Despite the Ukrainian leader’s words, according to Yevhen Dykyi, a veteran of the Russian-Ukrainian war, former company commander in the Aidar battalion and director of the National Antarctic Scientific Center, SpaceX temporarily restored the full functionality of Starlink and Starshield in Ukraine, but this is no reason for Kyiv to let down its guard.
“We have been given a reprieve. They tried to pressure us through Starlink and Starshield, issuing an ultimatum. We rejected that ultimatum. Subsequently, pro-Ukrainian forces in the US Congress and our European partners intervened, and the service was restored—at least for now,” the commentator says.
He added that the US would likely continue to pressure Ukraine to accept Russian ultimatums, which means that restrictions on the use of Starlink in Ukraine should be expected to be reintroduced.
“They are going all in; they intend to continue applying pressure. It is highly likely that access to Starlink and Starshield will be cut off again—probably within the next month. Therefore, during this pause, we must not relax or breathe a sigh of relief. On the contrary, we must urgently invest resources in finding substitutes and developing alternatives,” Dykyi added.
The expert stresses that although there is no single, comprehensive alternative to the Starlink system, Ukraine could replace individual components by using solutions that are already available on the market.
“One obvious way forward is to make the maximum possible shift towards artificial intelligence to replace human operators—by relying on systems that do not require manual correction when directing them at targets. We already have such systems; the challenge lies in scaling them up and overcoming hesitation about their use,” Dykyi noted.
Source: news.bg