Oct 20 (Reuters) - Elon Musk last week ordered the slowdown of a military-grade version of SpaceX’s Starlink satellite service that Ukraine relies on, the Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday, citing US officials and people familiar with the matter.
Musk, SpaceX and the White House did not immediately respond to Reuters requests for comment. Reuters could not immediately verify the report.
Ukraine uses Starlink for battlefield communications and drone operations. Restricting the satellite service hampered the country’s attack and air defense drone missions against Russia.
Musk and US President Donald Trump discussed the Starlink decision in a call soon after the slowdown became public, while the president was campaigning last week, according to the report, which added the two had also discussed the matter prior to the decision to throttle Starlink.
Reuters had reported exclusively that the order to limit the satellite system came from inside the White House.
Trump said last week he did not think either he or Musk was responsible for Ukraine losing Starlink access, while Musk said any limits on speed or Starship use were decided by the US military or the president.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s relations with Washington have sunk to new lows after Trump announced a deal to buy Russian diesel and waived new sanctions on Moscow. Trump has also told Kyiv to stop attacking Russian refineries and urged Ukrainians to replace Zelenskiy.
Zelenskiy, who is in Oslo in a bid to repair US relations, said on Tuesday he discussed issues including “the situation with Starlink/Starshield, which needs to be restored” with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said on Tuesday Washington had not pulled back Ukraine’s ability to access Starling’s satellite network, but signaled the problem lay with the terms of service Kyiv needed to comply with.
(Reporting by Anusha Shah in Bengaluru; Editing by Pooja Desai)
