Musk personally ordered slowdown of military Starlink for Ukrainian forces — WSJ

According to The Wall Street Journal, citing American officials, the order to slow down the military Starlink communications package for Ukrainian forces was given personally by SpaceX owner Elon Musk.

This likely occurred following consultations with U.S. President Donald Trump. The decision, according to the outlet, “caused panic in Kyiv.”

WSJ sources differ in their assessments of how involved Trump was in the decision. Two of them claim that Musk and Trump discussed the restrictions by phone shortly after they became widely known. One source insists that the businessman and the White House chief discussed the matter before the restrictions were introduced.

The views of American officials on the issue are also contradictory. Some believe Musk acted independently and that Trump did not order Ukraine to be punished. Others claim that before the slowdown, Musk consulted with several senior members of the American administration, including the president himself. One of the newspaper’s sources said that after the media uproar, SpaceX representatives contacted the White House to coordinate a unified position on the scandal.

The WSJ report was commented on by U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who is on a visit to India. He denied Trump’s involvement in restricting Starlink’s operation for Ukrainian forces and assured that the White House did not authorize such actions.

“Starlink is a private company. They have a contract, they have contractual terms regarding how that technology can be used. The important point is that we cannot tell a private company what decisions to make and what not to make. What I can say with confidence is that neither the President of the United States nor anyone else in our system ever asked for any changes to be made to this system,” Rubio told reporters.

Rubio also called false the media reports that U.S. authorities had denied Kyiv something necessary for its defense.

“That is not true. And the fact that leaders in Ukraine continue to portray it that way is also not true. No country in the world has done more to help Ukraine over the past four and a half years than the United States, including under the Trump administration,” the diplomat added.

Earlier, the British outlet The Daily Telegraph, citing sources, reported that it was Musk who proposed to the U.S. president that Starlink communications in Ukraine be restricted. Musk himself indicated on his social network that the restrictions were introduced at the direction of U.S. authorities.