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US President Donald Trump claimed that SpaceX CEO Elon Musk had lifted speed restrictions on the military version of Starlink in Ukraine, Reuters reported. However, the Ukrainian president’s office denied that the limits had been removed.
“I don’t want to comment on whether I called him or somebody else. It probably doesn’t matter. The point is, he put it back,” Trump told reporters when asked whether he had spoken to Musk.
Dmytro Lytvyn, an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on communications, disputed the claim in a comment on a related post on X.
“We see the same limit. So, as of now, nothing has changed,” Lytvyn said.
The previous day, The Wall Street Journal reported that Trump had called Musk and asked him to lift restrictions on Ukraine’s military Starlink service, which had been introduced by SpaceX.
Musk previously said that decisions on the system were made by the US military and the president, adding that commercial connectivity was not intended for offensive military operations. Trump denied Washington’s involvement in slowing the platform, while Secretary of State Marco Rubio claimed that StarShield was not available to Ukraine at all.
However, The Telegraph reported that Musk had personally proposed to Trump that connection speeds for the Ukrainian military be restricted. The Wall Street Journal subsequently published a similar account.
Republican Congressman Brian Fitzpatrick has announced plans to pursue serious accountability for those responsible for the possible restriction of StarShield, a military satellite communications platform based on the civilian Starlink system, in Ukraine.
