Democratic senators in the US Senate are demanding that Elon Musk’s space company SpaceX explain the throttling of satellite internet in Ukraine, and are threatening a parliamentary investigation. According to reports by Der Spiegel and t-online on Saturday, 14 November, the senators are said to have asked SpaceX to preserve all documents relating to the events and to confirm by 30 November that no documents are being destroyed.
The Democrats take the majority in the chamber in January and, according to both media, are already warming up for investigations of President Donald Trump’s administration. Among the signatories of the letter is Chris Coons, who is likely to take the chairmanship of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in January.
Who ordered the throttling?
The senators want to know, among other things, who ordered the speed throttling for the civilian Starlink internet as well as for the military version Starshield. They also ask what restrictions currently still apply and whether SpaceX weighed the possible consequences of the throttling for the Ukrainian population and for Americans in the country.
According to Der Spiegel and t-online, the Ukrainian government complained in October about speed restrictions lasting several days. Air-defence systems against Russian drones that depend on it had therefore not been able to be deployed, it was said. This week, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky again spoke of restrictions.
According to BBC News Ukraine on Thursday, 12 November, Zelensky had spoken of systematic speed limits for Starshield of 161 kilometres per hour. The Ukrainian armed forces had verified that these were not random errors. The consequence is that Russian jet drones are harder to intercept. “Because of the speed limit, we simply cannot react to the jet Shaheds in time,” Zelensky said, according to the report, at a meeting of European heads of state and government in Dublin. Near the front, the armed forces could not deploy their combat aircraft, only interceptor drones.
Kyiv initially received no explanations from Washington for the latest throttling, BBC News Ukraine reported. The president’s adviser Serhii Beskrestnov, known as “Flash”, told the broadcaster that the speed had again been limited while in motion. As a result, there were again problems with communication with helicopters pursuing Shahed drones and with jet interceptor aircraft. He suspected that the US side would point to the conditions of the military tariff plan for Ukraine, but those conditions had not bothered anyone for years.
Contradictory statements on responsibility
On who was responsible for the throttling, SpaceX and the US government made partly contradictory statements, according to t-online. Musk had accused Kyiv in October of using civilian Starlink for drone attacks, which he said violated the terms of use. Starshield, by contrast, is controlled by the US government. According to BBC News Ukraine, Musk wrote on X on 14 October that the Starshield systems belonged to the US government and were controlled by it; any speed or usage restrictions were set by the US armed forces and ultimately by the US president. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth, according to the report, rejected any government involvement in the restrictions. Ukraine did not receive a clear explanation at the time of what happened with Starlink in October.
The Ukrainian army has used Starlink-based internet for its communications since the start of Russia’s war of aggression in February 2022. According to t-online, Ukrainian drones equipped with Starlink terminals also attack targets in the Black Sea and in the Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine under remote control. Starlink is a commercial satellite internet service; Starshield is the better-protected military version developed for the needs of the Pentagon.
Pressure on SpaceX is not coming only from the Senate: according to BBC News Ukraine, 105 members of both parties in the US Congress called on the Trump administration to restore the full operation of Starshield in Ukraine without delay and demanded explanations from SpaceX. The European Commission also stated, according to the report, that SpaceX must put Starshield back into operation in Ukraine as quickly as possible.
Der Spiegel also reports on the stalled talks on possible peace negotiations. In the night to Friday, the US had signalled that Russian President Vladimir Putin was ready to allow Europeans to take part in the talks. US negotiator Jared Kushner said, according to the report, that there was agreement to include the European partners in the next round of negotiations. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov was more reserved: Russia had so far made no decision on an “expansion of the negotiating format”, he said on Friday. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz (CDU) called the Russian behaviour the “usual game” and stressed that there had been “a clear message. We are in agreement with the Americans”.
