The Starshield speed restriction for the Ukrainian army over occupied territory, down to 161 km/h, as of yesterday had been in place for five days. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called the decision very dangerous and political.
At a meeting with journalists on 13 November, he said that restricting communications only in the occupied territory indicates a partial refusal to recognise it as part of Ukraine. Kyiv tried to discuss the situation through military channels and with SpaceX, whose Starlink satellites are used by Starshield.
The Ministry of Defence spoke with SpaceX.
“They replied: ‘We are not restricting anything.’ Yet there have been restrictions for five days now. They say it is some kind of technical issue. We do not think so. The question is not whether we believe them or not. We do not think so. Perhaps there will be further checks. But every day we test in different directions. Every day there is such confirmation. That means these are not isolated incidents, but widespread,” the President of Ukraine said.
During previous restrictions in October, when the speed dropped across the whole of Ukraine, Zelenskyy spoke with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
“I don’t know whether it was a coincidence or not — I want to believe it wasn’t — but after that conversation with him we had no problems with early warnings about ballistic strikes, with intelligence sharing, and there were no Starlink and Starshield restrictions. Why am I recalling this now? Because during our conversation Rubio said that Starshield is more under the control of the US authorities, not SpaceX. The Starshield restrictions now suggest that SpaceX did it. That’s what our team is telling me,” the President explained.
He noted that any restriction for Ukraine is dangerous, because jet-powered drones are flying in from the east. Some of them were being shot down over the occupied territory.
Context
Last month, Ukrainian forces already faced a deliberate restriction of connection speed from 400 km/h to 160 km/h, which made it impossible to shoot down Russian jet-powered drones and to carry out operations against the occupiers. There was no official warning: Ukrainian forces discovered the speed drop and, as a result, the loss of drones only during operations. Ukraine checked whether the restriction applied to its Starlink in EU countries and found that it did not: the connection dropped only on its territory, while abroad it worked.
The owner of SpaceX, Elon Musk, accused Ukraine of using a civilian system to kill Russians, but Zelenskyy stressed that the system is not used for attacks on Russian territory.
The White House has still not answered who exactly was responsible for the speed restrictions that led to an intensification of Russian strikes on civilian facilities in Ukraine. The US President assured that he had not given such an instruction. The Senate plans to investigate what exactly happened.
On 12 November, the President reported that Starshield speeds over Ukraine had fallen again.