Zelensky urges restoration of Starshield service
Attribution for the slowdown differs across the available accounts. The Wall Street Journal reported that Elon Musk himself imposed the limits. Musk, SpaceX’s chief executive, said last week that Starshield access was controlled by the U.S. government. SpaceX had not responded to requests for comment on the Journal’s report that Musk ordered the slowdown, while U.S. officials denied that the White House ordered the restrictions. Zelensky said Monday that some drones using Starshield were losing connections at speeds as slow as 80 mph.
On Monday, six Ukrainian drones headed toward a Russian army warehouse in occupied eastern Ukraine. Whenever the drones moved faster than 100 mph, their video feeds cut out under limits imposed the previous week. Four reached the target’s vicinity and one hit the warehouse. The unit commander said pilots lost contact with the other drones and he did not know what happened to them. He said the team had flown more slowly for the past week and that the change had resulted in Russians shooting down the drones more often.
Ukrainian military units and analysts said the disruption was significantly affecting Kyiv’s defenses. Ukrainian drone forces have become dependent on Starshield, a military-grade subscription service that uses the same kinds of terminals as Starlink but offers higher capabilities for military use. Unlike ordinary Starlink connections, Starshield had no speed restrictions until the previous week. The system has been crucial to midrange strikes that successfully targeted Russian army logistics throughout the year, helping Ukraine hold off Moscow’s army and limit its advances to minimal levels in 2026. Officers and analysts warned that this defense could be at risk if the restrictions persisted.
Starshield also links air-defense interceptor drones that shoot down Russia’s jet-powered Geran drones. Ukrainian air-defense officers said they would struggle to protect civilians from airstrikes without unrestricted use of the service.
For much of the year, access to SpaceX’s Starlink satellite network gave Ukraine a battlefield advantage. At the start of February, SpaceX allowed only accounts on an approved “white list” to use the service in Ukraine, effectively ending Russian forces’ unauthorized access. Ukraine’s military communications rely heavily on the commercial version of Starlink, whose connection cuts out at around 50 mph on a drone or vehicle. Until the previous week, Starshield offered a fast, reliable connection throughout Ukraine, including on missions deep into occupied territory. Starlink does not work inside Russia, so Ukraine’s military used other navigation methods for long-range drone raids there, including strikes against oil refineries. On the night of Oct. 13, without warning, the Starshield connection began to drop.
Sokol, the commander of a Ukrainian drone-interceptor unit, said the biggest challenge facing his team was the jet-powered, long-range Geran drones, which can reach speeds of as much as 370 mph. Their speed has made them one of the foremost threats to Ukrainian civilians because they are much harder to shoot down than previous propeller-powered Russian drones. Sokol said interceptor drones can fly at around 250 mph and still take out some Gerans, but the task becomes much harder if an interceptor can fly only at 90 mph. “It’s a serious limitation,” he said. “What concerns me most is how dependent we are on a technology that we don’t control,” he said.
Michael Kofman, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank, said Ukraine had few good options for replacing Starshield. He said mesh modem networks and mobile LTE networks were more expensive than Starlink and had other disadvantages, including communication lags. “It’s a very serious problem,” Kofman said. “Other mechanisms would be difficult and expensive to scale.”
One prominent Russian military blogger posted on Telegram on Monday that a key highway in occupied territory had been relatively free of drone attacks in recent days. Commanders of several Ukrainian drone teams conducting midrange strikes said nearly all their missions involved Starshield and that they were struggling to adjust, mostly by flying more slowly.
Brut, the commander of one unit, said his team flew no missions during the first few days after the restriction while trying to determine what had gone wrong. The team resumed operations with its drones set to fly at 85 mph instead of 100 mph, but the connection sometimes still cut out. During a mission several days earlier to strike an air-defense system in Russian-occupied Crimea, the pilot could barely see the drone’s video feed during the entire flight. The drone continued toward the target on autopilot, but there was no way to evade potential obstacles along the route. “We knew it was programmed to fly to certain coordinates, but we didn’t know if it would make it or not,” Brut said. Brut said the drone hit the target.
At ranges of more than about 70 miles, the commander of a drone unit on Ukraine’s eastern front said there was no substitute for Starshield. He said even if an alternative were found, many drones designed for Starshield would have to be sent back to manufacturers and reconfigured. He said the drones previously could maneuver around Russian air defenses, including by going into a steep dive, but that maneuver now meant losing their connection. “The number of drones being shot down has increased,” he said.
Musk had previously limited Starlink access during the war. In fall 2022, Ukrainian forces complained of widespread connection failures in southern and eastern Ukraine, which hindered counteroffensives intended to retake Russian-occupied territory. Ukrainian forces nevertheless forced Russian retreats in the Kherson and Kharkiv regions. In another 2022 episode, Musk denied a Ukrainian request to use Starlink in the Russian-occupied Crimea peninsula, hampering Ukrainian attempts to strike the Russian navy. Musk said the request would have involved SpaceX in an escalation of the war.
As Kyiv and Washington continued tense discussions over issues including President Trump’s moves to relax sanctions on Russia, Ukrainian forces were trying to fight without flying their drones at top speed. Zelensky said Tuesday that he had discussed the restrictions with Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Starshield, he said, “needs to be restored.”
Denys Sienik, Ukraine’s top diplomat in Washington, said Tuesday: “We are still waiting for the official response from contacts with the Pentagon and SpaceX at the leaders level to understand what has happened.” A European Union spokesman told reporters Wednesday that SpaceX must urgently restore full services for Ukraine because Ukraine needed the information to keep soldiers connected, protect citizens and pilot drones needed to defend its territory. The spokesman said the war had shown the urgency of Europe doing more to develop its own space capabilities.