Elon Musk said over the weekend that SpaceX placed limits on Ukraine's use of its Starlink satellite network last week, according to NBC News, and that the company was enforcing its own rules of service. Ukraine's government rejected the charge, saying it never breached those terms and that both Starlink and its military-grade counterpart, Starshield, were working normally again by Saturday.
The restrictions, which Ukrainian officials said arrived without warning, had disrupted military operations for roughly two days before service was restored. Musk announced the curbs in a string of posts on X from Saturday night into Sunday morning, NBC News reported.
Why it matters
Starlink has become the backbone of Ukrainian front-line communications. It carries command traffic, supports drone missions and helps Ukraine intercept Russian attack drones. Musk himself described the stakes in a post, saying the system is the only one that cannot currently be jammed or destroyed, and that without it the Ukrainian front line "would collapse immediately." He said the remark was not a threat but a statement of fact.
The episode also lands at a delicate moment in relations between Washington and Kyiv, and it has renewed questions about how much control a private company — and the U.S. government behind it — holds over a wartime ally's ability to communicate.
What each side says happened
Musk wrote that Ukraine had breached "Starlink terms of service" by employing the civilian service for offensive drone strikes. He said such use "has never been allowed, nor should it be," and that SpaceX "simply enforced our terms of service when they were bypassed."
Ukrainian officials and military figures disputed that account. Presidential adviser Serhiy Beskrestnov said on Telegram that Starlink does not operate over Russian territory, so Ukraine "physically cannot" use the commercial service for strikes at long or medium range. He added that it was "very strange" Musk appeared unaware of the restrictions imposed in Ukraine.
Serhii Sternenko, a former drone adviser to Ukraine's defense ministry, wrote on X that the scenario Musk described was technically impossible. Any satellite terminal in motion had to be registered on a special list and linked to the military Starshield system, he said, meaning drone missions needing satellite links could only run through Starshield. He thanked the United States and SpaceX for access to satellite communications and stated plainly that Ukraine did not violate the terms of use.
Ukrainian officials said the restrictions had capped Starshield operations at speeds of 100 mph, which hampered efforts to intercept drones and forced some operations to be called off. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said speeds began returning to normal on Saturday night, and the defense ministry said the connection was holding steady above 250 mph. Ukraine's military does not publish the systems' top operating speeds.
A week of pressure on the ground
The service disruption came during a heavy stretch of Russian bombardment. Zelenskyy said on Sunday that Russia had fired roughly 1,600 guided aerial bombs, 48 missiles of various types including ballistic ones, and close to 2,300 attack drones at Ukraine over the previous week. He said the strikes had killed and injured people on almost every day. He did not directly connect the attacks to the Starlink limits.
The restrictions coincided with a period of strain between the White House and Kyiv. According to NBC News, President Donald Trump had agreed to a diesel deal with Russia, waived wide-ranging sanctions and called for Ukraine to have a new president. Ukrainian officials also described a temporary pause in U.S. intelligence warnings about incoming Russian attacks during the same period.
Trump was asked about the matter and declined to detail any conversations. "I don't want to comment on it, whether I called or whether somebody else called, doesn't make any difference, I guess," he said, according to NBC News. "The bottom line — he put it back." The Wall Street Journal reported that Trump had phoned Musk and asked him to lift the restrictions.
Musk had earlier said that any limits on Starshield's speed or usage are set by the U.S. military and ultimately by the president. Neither he nor the U.S. government initially took responsibility for last week's curbs.
Zelenskyy, speaking to NBC News' "Meet the Press" before service returned, said he did not know whether Trump or Musk had ordered the limits but believed "both" were involved. He said that if Trump decided to lift the restriction, the system would work as before straight away.
Musk's broader remarks
Alongside the explanation of the restrictions, Musk used the posts to attack his critics, calling them "bloodthirsty warmongers" who want the fighting to continue until, in his words, every last man in Ukraine has died in a ditch. Hours later, he replied "Yes" to a user who wrote that Zelenskyy needs to go.
Ukrainian drone strikes deep inside Russia continued through the week despite the connectivity problems, according to NBC News.
The dispute has also sharpened Kyiv's interest in reducing its dependence on one provider. Last week Ukraine's defense ministry announced a partnership with Nokia and the Finnish satellite imagery company ICEYE to build a "sovereign satellite communications" system. The two firms are already working on a Starlink-style internet network built on what the ministry described as trusted European technology. Zelenskyy said at the time that reliable communications had become a matter of national security and that Ukraine must be able to rely on systems it controls.
Concerns about interference with Ukraine's Starlink access are not new. A September 2022 interruption occurred during a major Ukrainian push to retake territory, and a Reuters report in 2025 cited three sources alleging that Musk gave an order that disrupted a counteroffensive.
What to watch next: whether Ukraine's new European satellite partnership advances quickly enough to matter, and whether Washington clarifies who actually controls the limits on Starshield.
