According to US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Ukraine currently has no access to the military satellite network Starshield. Rubio said this to journalists, as reported by the news outlet Kyiv Post, citing the US State Department. At the same time, Rubio rejected any responsibility on Washington’s part for the temporary slowdown of the commercial Starlink service in Ukraine.
Rubio spoke to reporters before departing from Joint Base Andrews on a trip to Uzbekistan and India, as Firstpost reports. He explicitly distinguished between Starlink and Starshield: “Starlink is a commercial product, okay? And so it’s regulated and handled as a commercial product. Starshield is a defense product, a military product,” he said, according to Kyiv Post. Starshield is used by the US military and is “at this moment” not available to Ukraine. “I know Ukraine wants access to Starshield. They do not have Starshield now. They’ve asked for access to it in order to conduct deep strikes inside of Russia,” Rubio continued.
“Categorically false”: Rubio denies order from the White House
Asked about a possible role for Washington in the slowdown, Rubio replied, according to Firstpost: “No. Well, I don’t know what Zelenskyy said. I’m not sure Zelenskyy knows what he’s talking about, but it wasn’t deliberate. We have nothing to do with that.” No one had ordered the Starlink speed to be reduced. “It sort of happened, but my understanding is it’s been restored. It’s back to where it was before.” He called reports of an order from the White House “categorically false”: “No one at the White House ordered anyone to slow down internet or slow down speed so that certain drones couldn’t use it.”
Rubio thus directly contradicts the account given by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. According to Kyiv Post, Zelenskyy had stated that Starlink terminals in Ukraine had been limited to a maximum speed of 161 km/h. When this limit was exceeded, the satellite connection was cut, so that operators lost control of drones in flight. Ukrainian technician teams had sent vehicles with Starlink terminals to the EU for comparative tests, where the devices had worked without interruption at 180 km/h. For Zelenskyy, these tests proved that the restriction was specifically aimed at Ukrainian airspace and was not due to a global software error.
Report: Musk allegedly proposed the slowdown to Trump
Rubio’s denial contradicts a report by the British newspaper “The Telegraph”, which the Tagesspiegel cites, referring to the news agency dpa. According to that report, SpaceX chief Elon Musk allegedly proposed to US President Donald Trump a slowdown of the Starlink and Starshield systems in Ukraine; Trump had agreed. The newspaper named four sources familiar with the matter. Musk himself had written on X that any speed or usage restrictions would be set by the US military and ultimately by the US president.
Trump had already denied any responsibility on Friday. “I didn’t do that. No, we didn’t do that at all,” he said to reporters in Washington, according to Tagesspiegel. Deutsche Welle reports, citing the news agency Reuters, that according to sources from the presidential office the White House had ordered a slowdown of Starshield services; however, a senior US official had stated that the president himself had not given any such instruction.
According to Tagesspiegel and Deutsche Welle, in the night to Wednesday, 14 October, a speed limit for Starlink terminals had been introduced without warning, which lasted a little more than a day. According to the reports, flying objects lost their connection when they moved faster than 160 km/h. Long-range Ukrainian drones, some of which fly at up to 300 km/h, were thus flying blind. The Swiss broadcaster SRF reported that, according to other reports, the connection was already cut at 110 or 120 km/h.
The matter has now also occupied the US Congress. According to Deutsche Welle, nine members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee – including four Republicans – are calling for an investigation in a letter to the Pentagon’s inspector general. The aim is to examine whether US officials approved or knew in advance about the interruption of Starshield. “The United States government has a fundamental duty to protect American personnel abroad,” the letter says.
Editor’s note: Whether and to what extent the slowdown has now been fully lifted cannot be independently verified on the basis of the available sources. Rubio and Trump deny any instruction; the “Telegraph” report and statements from the White House cited by Reuters point in a different direction.
Earlier coverage: Who throttled Starlink for Ukraine’s drones?
