On Saturday, 24 October, Ukraine's Defence Ministry said Starlink and Starshield were working above 400 km/h, after earlier reporting speeds above 161 km/h that morning.
On Friday, 23 October, Trump defended Musk and said he had restored Starlink for Ukraine, without confirming whether he had personally made the call.
Zelensky said terminals lost connection above roughly 130 to 161 km/h, and Kyiv linked the caps to its refusal to halt strikes on Russian refineries.
Ukraine relies on Starlink, the satellite internet service run by SpaceX, and its military version Starshield for drone operations and battlefield communications. Zelensky said Starlink terminals stopped working or lost connection when drones moved faster than roughly 130 to 161 km/h, a limit he said was introduced without prior notice and hurt both attack and defence operations. The restrictions followed a sharp public clash between Zelensky and Trump. Kyiv linked their timing to a US request that Ukraine stop striking Russian refineries, made as Washington and Moscow moved to ease sanctions on diesel, a request Zelensky rejected because the Kremlin had not reciprocated.
On Friday, 23 October, Trump defended Musk at the White House, calling him a great person and saying Starlink would not exist without him. He said he would pass Ukraine's complaints to the SpaceX chief and would speak to him again if the problem had not been fixed. Trump also said Musk had restored the service, without saying whether he had personally asked Musk to act. Citing American officials, the Wall Street Journal reported that Trump had asked Musk to lift the limits on Ukrainian military use and had been unhappy with a cap of about 160 km/h. The White House and Musk had each denied being behind the speed limits.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio described Starshield as follows:
“Starshield is a defence product, a military product. It's not, at this moment, available to Ukraine, and that's under consideration.”
On Saturday, 24 October, Ukraine's Defence Ministry said its monitoring showed Starlink and Starshield working again at speeds above 161 km/h. Later that day it said the link was stable above 400 km/h.
“We are recording a speed of over 400 km/h, the connection is stable.”
The ministry said it would keep testing higher speeds to find the upper limit and to check how far functionality had been restored. It also said the 400 km/h reading did not automatically mean the maximum speed had been set or that all limits had been lifted. On Friday, Zelensky had told the Hudson Institute that speed had not been restored and that limits introduced without warning were still hurting the army. On the same day, presidential adviser Dmytro Lytvyn wrote on X that Kyiv was seeing the same restrictions. Fellow adviser Serhiy Beskrestnov said on 23 October that no lifting of the limits had been recorded, though Starlink occasionally ran faster than the cap.
Kyiv said the earlier cap had blocked some drone use, and the ministry tied the result to soldiers, drone operations, logistics and communications at the front. Zelensky also accused Washington of not warning Kyiv several times about Russian missile launches before they struck. He criticised US delays in delivering promised interceptors against Russian ballistic missiles. Who set the cap is still disputed: one account holds that Musk proposed it and Trump endorsed it, while another says the decision rested with Musk's team, which owns the infrastructure. Zelensky said he was waiting for Rubio's answer, which Rubio had promised within about 48 hours.
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Ukraine's Defence Ministry said on Saturday, 24 October, that Starlink and Starshield were stable above 400 km/h, after days of speed caps Kyiv blamed on Washington. The White House and Elon Musk had both denied being behind the limits.
AI text based on reports by Focus, La Libre.be, G4Media.ro and other publishers. Changed .