Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Friday that his country’s access to Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite network is still limited. His comments came a day after President Donald Trump told reporters the problem had been fixed.
Zelenskyy told ABC News on Friday that the network, which is critical to Ukraine’s military operations, is still not fully working despite Trump’s assurances. “It works, but it’s still limited,” he said, adding that the network’s range was narrow.
At the White House on Friday, reporters asked Trump about the ongoing problems. He said he had not yet spoken to Musk, whose company SpaceX runs Starlink, about it. “I’ve heard it was fixed, but if it’s not, I’ll speak to him,” the president said.
Zelenskyy repeated the complaint in a speech at the Hudson Institute on Friday. He said restrictions on both Starlink and Starshield remain in place, despite Trump’s earlier claims that service had been restored. He also said agreed deliveries of interceptor missiles used to stop Russian ballistic missiles are still delayed. “The speed limits on Starlink and Starshield are still there,” Zelenskyy told the audience.
The Ukrainian leader said Ukraine has received only 24 Patriot interceptors from the U.S. in the last three months, far fewer than it needs. He said 30 ballistic missiles hit Kyiv on Thursday night alone, and that Ukraine needs an average of 350 Patriot interceptors a month.
The dispute has simmered for more than a week. Ukraine reported that its military had lost access to the military version of Starlink, which it relies on for vital communications. A source familiar with the matter told The Hill that service was cut specifically for objects moving faster than 100 mph, which affected Ukraine’s drones, airplanes and helicopters. A senior Ukrainian commander told The New York Times the restrictions cost his unit more than $1 million and delayed missions by three days.
Musk initially deferred to Trump. He wrote on X that any limits on speed or usage are decided by the U.S. military and ultimately the president. He added that Starlink is limited to civilian or defensive use and cannot be used for offensive military action, which he said would be inappropriate for a commercial company.
The White House has repeatedly said it was not behind the slowdown. Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters Wednesday that decisions about Ukraine’s Starlink access were up to SpaceX and Musk, not the White House. Earlier, Trump said neither he nor Musk had caused the outage, even as he clashed with Zelenskyy over Ukraine’s resumed strikes on Russian oil refineries.
On Thursday, The Wall Street Journal reported that Trump had called Musk and asked him to lift the restrictions. “The bottom line — he put it back,” Trump told reporters when asked whether he had spoken to Musk. The Journal also reported that two unnamed sources said Trump and Musk discussed the decision to throttle Starlink soon after it became public, and one source said Musk spoke with Trump before imposing the speed cap.
Earlier in the week, after talks with U.S. officials, Zelenskyy said at a press conference in Oslo that Starlink service would be restored within 48 hours. He also thanked the Americans for restoring Ukraine’s ballistic missile warning system.
The fight over Starlink has become a flash point between Trump and Zelenskyy. Trump said the Ukrainian president was “not a good guy for us to deal with.”
