SpaceX appears to lift Starshield restrictions on Ukraine's military

SpaceX appears to have lifted restrictions on the Ukrainian military’s use of Starshield, the military-grade version of its Starlink system, Defense Minister Evgeniy Khmara told reporters, according to the Wall Street Journal. Khmara said service appears normal again, though the military is still testing it and has received no explanation for the restrictions.

The fix follows a 10-day period in which Ukrainian drones lost connectivity at speeds around 100 miles per hour, costing the military control of some drones outright while leaving others more vulnerable as they flew slower to stay connected.

President Donald Trump reportedly called SpaceX CEO Elon Musk on Wednesday to ask him to restore the service. Both men have criticized Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. The Journal had previously reported that Musk ordered the throttling — though some sources said he’d discussed it with the Trump administration first — because Ukraine had, in Musk’s account, violated Starlink’s terms of service by using it for offensive drone strikes to kill people.

Defending the leverage this gives him, Musk said: “Were Starlink to be turned off, the Ukrainian front line would collapse immediately” — not a threat, he added, but simply a statement of fact.

Why it matters

The episode underscores how dependent Ukraine’s drone operations are on a single foreign company’s satellite network — and how directly one phone call between Trump and Musk could restore or cut off a capability that, on Musk’s own account, the Ukrainian front line depends on.