Ukrainian drones and vehicles using SpaceX satellite terminals have been losing their connection the moment they move faster than 161 km/h (100 mph), a restriction Ukrainian military users first hit overnight from October 13 to October 14, according to Fortune. Nearly a week later, SpaceX founder Elon Musk, US President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio have each denied ordering the cap, even as Rubio conceded to reporters that something had happened.
Key facts
- The restriction severs a terminal’s satellite link the instant its physical movement exceeds 161 km/h, the Associated Press reported, as cited by Latin Times.
- It applied to the Starshield military service package, the government and defence version of the network, according to Serhii “Flash” Beskrestnov, a defence technology adviser to Ukraine’s president, as reported by Fortune.
- Some units reported worse: Ukraine’s 7th Rapid Response Corps said links dropped for 10 to 20 seconds at 110 to 120 km/h, and activist Serhii Sternenko, citing military reports, claimed drops as low as 60 to 70 km/h, Fortune reported.
- Ukrainian sources told the AP and Fortune that terminals need to work at a minimum of 450 km/h to be effective.
- Ukraine’s Defence Ministry said service had partially stabilised for terminals moving below about 160 km/h, while President Volodymyr Zelensky said the cap itself remained in place as of the weekend, according to Fortune.
Why it matters
Ukraine flies domestically built interceptor drones to hunt Russia’s jet-powered Shahed attack drones, known in Russia as the Geran-3. Fortune puts their speed at up to 370 km/h (about 230 mph); Latin Times reports Zelensky citing speeds above 400 km/h. Either way, an interceptor that loses its control link at 161 km/h cannot keep pace, leaving Russian drones free to reach Ukrainian cities, Latin Times reported.
Victoria Samson, chief director of space security and stability at the Secure World Foundation, a space policy organisation, told Fortune the interference hurt Ukraine’s ability to defend itself against very high-speed drones, and that it coincided with the United States halting early-warning notifications about incoming Russian missiles. She said the combination looked like a deliberate effort to impede Ukraine’s defence.
Three denials and one “sort of”
Musk posted on X that Starshield systems are owned and controlled by the US government and that any limits on speed or usage are decided by the US military and ultimately the president, according to Fortune and Yahoo Finance.
Trump told reporters: “It wasn’t me, and I don’t think it was Elon,” per CBS News as quoted by Fortune.
Rubio, who serves as both secretary of state and national security adviser, told reporters at Joint Base Andrews that nobody in the United States ordered Starlink speeds slowed. He called such reports categorically false and said he was not sure Zelensky knew what he was talking about, according to Latin Times and Al Jazeera. A day later, before flying to Uzbekistan, he said the slowdown had “sort of happened” and that service had been restored to its previous level — a claim Kyiv disputes.
Read together, the three statements do not contradict each other so much as point past each other. Musk assigns the authority to the US government, Trump excludes both himself and Musk, and Rubio denies an order while conceding the effect. What is left is a measurable change to a battlefield network with no acknowledged author.
Reporting points the other way. Two US officials and a Western official told Reuters the order to slow Starshield service for Ukraine came from inside the White House, without naming who made it, Fortune reported. A senior Ukrainian official told Reuters that Kyiv called the White House, State Department and Pentagon and was told it was a White House decision. The Telegraph, citing four sources, reported on October 16 that Musk brought the idea to Trump and Trump agreed, with the Pentagon enforcing it on Starshield. European Pravda cited two Ukrainian sources and a senior European official corroborating that account, Latin Times said.
The Starshield access dispute
Rubio also told reporters that Starshield has nothing to do with Ukraine and that a Ukrainian request for access to conduct deep strikes inside Russia is still under discussion, Latin Times reported. That sits awkwardly with a Bloomberg investigation published in December 2024, cited by Latin Times, which reported an August 2024 Pentagon contract expanding Starshield access in Ukraine from about 500 terminals to roughly 3,000; the Pentagon’s Space Systems Command confirmed the arrangement at the time. Previous reporting has also described how Starshield has run Ukrainian drone operations.
Ukraine’s evidence and Kyiv’s reading
Zelensky said Ukrainian specialists tested terminals inside the European Union at speeds above 180 km/h with no loss of connection, and that Ukraine holds the logs and evidence, according to Yahoo Finance. He argued the restrictions operate on Ukrainian territory but not in EU countries.
On NBC’s Meet the Press on October 18, Zelensky said his generals, his government and he himself read the throttling as a message from the American government to limit speeds, that SpaceX implemented it technically, and that service could be restored if Trump personally decided to lift it, Fortune and Yahoo Finance reported. In a Bloomberg interview published the same weekend, Zelensky said he believed steps had been taken to convince Ukraine to capitulate.
Ukraine’s former defence minister Mykhailo Fedorov said partial connectivity had returned by Saturday while stressing that removing the Starshield speed limit entirely was critical for Ukraine’s defence, according to Latin Times and Yahoo Finance.
Background: sanctions relief and a European backup
Fortune reports the throttling came as Trump pressed Kyiv to stop striking Russian oil refineries, which he has blamed for rising energy prices. On October 9, after Trump announced a diesel deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin, the Treasury issued General License 135 permitting the sale and import of Russian-origin diesel through April 7, 2027. Late on October 16, Trump signed an executive order waiving nearly all substantive measures in the Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act of 2026 before they took effect.
The episode has also sharpened Europe’s search for an alternative. Yahoo Finance reports the EU is seeking to reduce its reliance on Musk and Washington, and that the US ambassador to the EU warned of “devastating” retaliation if Brussels favours EU-made satellites over companies such as SpaceX. The Telegraph reported, per Latin Times, that Musk grew alarmed about adverse consumer reaction in Europe, a factor cited as contributing to the partial restoration.
What it signals for the wider network
For subscribers far from the war, the week’s lesson is that Starlink’s availability is a policy variable as well as an engineering one: performance on the government tier changed without any party admitting to a decision, and the only published evidence of what changed came from the users who lost the link. The commercial service kept growing through it, though the two headline counts differ — Fortune puts it at more than 12 million customers, Yahoo Finance at more than 13 million subscribers worldwide. The reports use different units and were published days apart, so the gap most plausibly reflects two separate tallies rather than a dispute about how big the constellation’s user base is. The figure actually in contention is far smaller and far more consequential: the 161 km/h ceiling that Zelensky says is still in force.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does the speed cap affect ordinary Starlink customers?
The reported restriction applied to Starshield, the government and defence package of SpaceX’s satellite network, according to Ukrainian defence technology adviser Serhii Beskrestnov as reported by Fortune. Rubio told reporters that Starlink is a commercial service available on the open market, while Starshield is an encrypted military product under Pentagon contract, Latin Times reported. Musk said Starlink itself is limited to civilian or defensive activities, according to Yahoo Finance.
Who pays for Ukraine’s Starlink terminals?
Poland finances Ukraine’s Starlink subscriptions at roughly $50 million a year, Latin Times reported, and Fortune says Poland has paid for tens of thousands of the terminals Ukraine uses. Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski publicly challenged Musk on X on the day the cap took effect, asking whether he was playing politics with his products again.
Has SpaceX restricted Starlink in Ukraine before?
Yes. Yahoo Finance reports that in 2022 Musk reportedly ordered SpaceX engineers to cut some Starlink coverage in contested areas of Ukraine, and that in 2023 the company acknowledged efforts to throttle wartime usage, with President and COO Gwynne Shotwell saying there were things SpaceX could do and had done. Yahoo Finance notes this is the first such episode since SpaceX became a public company this summer.
Is the US Congress investigating the disruption?
Senator Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) asked Musk on X to confirm the overnight disruptions were unintended and later called for a Pentagon inspector general investigation, according to Fortune. Senator Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) wrote that the restrictions on Ukraine’s access to Starshield must stop immediately. Fortune said it contacted both senators’ offices and had no reply before publication.
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