President Donald Trump said Elon Musk has lifted restrictions on Ukraine’s access to Starshield, the military equivalent of Starlink — a claim Ukraine refuted Friday — amid confusion over who previously ordered access to the network be curtailed.
Asked Friday whether he had spoken to Musk about the satellite system — operated by Musk’s SpaceX — Trump said: “I have not spoken to him. I might … have to, but I have not. I’ve heard … it was fixed, but if it’s not, I’ll fix it.”
Speaking to reporters a day before, Trump described his relationship with Musk as “a very good one.” The “bottom line,” he said, speaking of the Starshield restrictions, was that Musk had “put it back.”
However, Ukraine’s chargé d’affaires in the U.S., Denys Sienik, said “speed restrictions remain in place” on Friday. “Unfortunately, as of today, nothing has changed. We continue to wait,” he wrote on X.
Ukrainian soldiers said they were still experiencing Starshield disruptions. On Friday, Starshield was still operating “with constant interruptions,” although at a higher speed than on Thursday, Ukrainian commander Andriy “Klima” Klymenko, commander of the 414th Unmanned Systems Brigade, told The Washington Post.
Ukraine’s military access to Starshield, a secure satellite network designed for government use, was unexpectedly throttled last week, impeding Ukraine’s midrange strike campaign on Russian-occupied territory.
The widespread confusion over the state of U.S. support for Ukraine is also affecting the U.S. embassy in Ukraine, where U.S. diplomats have raised questions internally about where Washington stands.
On Thursday, the deputy chief of mission at the U.S. embassy, Meghan Gregonis, wrote a letter to staff acknowledging that “recent public commentary has left many of you wondering where the U.S.-Ukraine relationship stands.”
“I’ve heard those concerns around the embassy, and I take them seriously,” she wrote in a memo obtained by The Post.
She noted that the past few weeks “have been hard on all of us, with last night and today examples of the extraordinary challenges we are all facing here as residents of Kyiv, as missile and drone strikes persist.”
The day the memo was sent, Kyiv endured a Russian barrage of 21 ballistic missiles in three waves that damaged apartment buildings, a railway station, shopping malls, energy facilities, and killed one person in the city, according to the Ukrainian government.
But Gregonis insisted to employees that “the fundamentals have not changed,” and highlighted remarks from Secretary of State Marco Rubio denying that Trump ordered the suspension of intelligence-sharing to Ukraine. “None of that has changed, none of it,” she quoted Rubio as saying.
“He also called the suggestion that the United States is deliberately harming Ukraine ‘not fair and not true,’” she wrote.
The curtailed Starshield service followed Trump’s announcement of a diesel deal with Russia and demands that Ukraine halt strikes on Russian oil refineries, as he sought to address high energy prices ahead of the midterm elections.
The Trump administration has faced repeated questions over why access to Starshield was curtailed and who ordered it. The Wall Street Journal reported this week that Musk ordered the slowdown and that Trump called him to ask it be lifted.
Musk did not respond to a request for comment. He has previously said “any limits on speed or usage are decided by the U.S. military and ultimately” by Trump.
Trump has recently increased pressure on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to make a deal to end Russia’s war against Ukraine, called for his ouster and waived punishing sanctions against Moscow.
Earlier this week, Russia agreed to start restart trilateral talks with Ukrainian representatives, following a meeting between U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff and Russian President Vladimir Putin. On Friday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said talks were planned for the first half of November, in Abu Dhabi.
On Thursday, Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Connecticut), the senior Democrat on the Senate’s permanent subcommittee on investigations, said he had opened an inquiry into the restrictions to Starshield services.
In a letter to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Blumenthal said the interruption raises questions about who has the technical and legal authority to make such changes and whether the U.S. military had sufficient alternatives if SpaceX-provided services became unavailable.
Separately, eight other members of Congress in a letter led by Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Arizona) and Sen. Thom Tillis (R-North Carolina) also said they were concerned about the service outages. They urged Hegseth to expand Ukraine’s existing Starshield contract to ensure it does not lose service again and to allow it to strike lawful targets inside Russia.
“The United States and Europe have made significant investments in Ukraine’s defense because of how a Russian victory would put our security at risk. Those investments should not be undermined by preventable disruptions,” that letter said.
Tillis said Thursday that he still wants to know who decided to cut service. “Innocent Ukrainians have bore the murderous brunt” of limited access to the technology.
“We’ve spent that week trying to determine the party responsible, but they have yet to own the decision, if in fact one was made,” he posted on X. “I have full confidence in the powers of the United States Government and SpaceX to solve this, if there are indeed no objections.”
Vice President JD Vance said Thursday that it was “completely understandable” that Musk did not want to get involved in the war as the executive of a private company.
“I don’t think this is about Elon. I think it’s fundamentally, what is America’s policy in Ukraine and Russia going to be,” Vance said.
Tara Copp and Michael Birnbaum contributed to this report.
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