Elon Musk Confirms Spacex Throttled Starlink Access for Ukraine Military

Elon Musk acknowledged over the weekend that SpaceX deliberately slowed Ukraine’s access to Starlink satellite internet, saying the company acted because Ukrainian forces had used the civilian service to guide offensive drone strikes against Russia.

The New York Post reports that in a series of posts on X, Musk said Ukraine’s military had broken the terms of service governing Starlink by using it for attacks meant to kill people. “Using Starlink, a civilian commercial service, for offensive drone strikes to kill people has never been allowed, nor should it be,” he wrote. He described the workaround Ukraine had found as a “loophole” that SpaceX shut down. “Ukraine military [sic] violated Starlink terms of service and used it for offensive drone strikes to kill people. That loophole was closed last week,” Musk wrote.

Musk drew a distinction between Starlink, the commercial internet service, and Starshield, a separate military version of the system that he said is controlled by the U.S. government rather than SpaceX. “Starshield, a different system, is controlled by the US government. What they decide to do is up to them,” he said. That distinction had caused confusion in the days before his confirmation. Musk initially suggested that complaints from Ukrainians concerned Starshield rather than Starlink, leaving unclear who was actually responsible for the disruption.

Breitbart News previously reported that Secretary of State Marco Rubio denied that the Trump White House directed SpaceX to cut off Ukraine’s Starlink access:

“I’m not ​aware that we knew about this decision beforehand,” Rubio told reporters during a trip to India, according to a report by Reuters.

“But that’s irrelevant,” Rubio added. “The bottom ​line is that that is governed by a private commercial contract as to how their stuff can be used and what speeds they’ll allow it to be used at.”

While Reuters cited two U.S. officials who claimed the decision came from the White House, the Wall Street Journal — also citing U.S. officials and others familiar with the matter — reported it was actually Musk who ordered the slowdown, which then caused confusion inside the Trump administration.

Ukrainian officials first reported trouble with their Starlink access roughly two weeks before Musk’s statement. At the time, Ukrainian drones were traveling at 160 km/h or faster, markedly slower than Russian drones, which were moving at 400 km/h or more. The disruption came shortly after Trump announced a diesel deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin, and just days after Musk had echoed Trump’s calls for Ukraine to replace its leadership, pointing to complaints over Ukraine’s strikes on Russian oil refineries. Those refinery strikes have unfolded against the backdrop of Russian attacks on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure as winter approaches.

The throttling of service angered officials across party lines in the United States, and drew criticism from other countries too. By Saturday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said the problem had been resolved. “The speeds are now at the level we need,” he wrote in a Telegram post confirming that full Starlink service had been restored.

Musk used the same round of posts to push back on criticism of how the war has been handled, while also defending SpaceX’s record of support for Ukraine. “SpaceX has done more to defend Ukraine than any private company on Earth BY FAR,” he wrote. He then turned on those he accused of prolonging the conflict without offering solutions. “That said, I have nothing but UTTER CONTEMPT for the virtue-signaling evil warmongers who push for endless slaughter and offer no realistic solution to the conflict,” he wrote, closing with: “May you burn in hell.”

Read more at the New York Post here.

Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of AI, free speech, and online censorship.