Musk Restricted Starshield: Ukrainian Drones Lose Connection Above 160 km/h, and Nobody in Washington Admits Giving the Order

According to the US newspaper The Wall Street Journal, citing sources in the US administration, Elon Musk personally ordered restrictions on Starshield - SpaceX's military satellite system, through which the Ukrainian army controls combat drones and intercepts Russian unmanned aircraft. The same was later reported by US broadcaster CBS News.

The restrictions, according to the newspaper, took effect on October 14. The consequences at the front were immediately visible: drones lost connection in flight, and some became practically unusable. Some Ukrainian operators reported dropouts as soon as the aircraft exceeded around 160 kilometres per hour, while other units say the link was lost at lower speeds too. The hardest hit are fast interceptor drones, which need an uninterrupted connection to track and shoot down Russian drones - but also the strike drones Ukraine uses to hit targets in Russia.

The refineries, the diesel and the elections

Before the decision there were conversations between Musk and President Donald Trump. According to the newspaper's sources, in the preceding weeks both had been unhappy with Ukrainian strikes on Russian refineries. Trump believes those attacks contribute to rising prices of diesel and other fuels, which is a serious political problem for his administration ahead of the congressional elections. So he asked Kyiv to stop hitting Russian refineries - and at the same time reached a deal with Moscow to restore deliveries of Russian diesel to the US market.

If the sources are right, the logic goes like this: Ukrainian strikes push diesel up, diesel is a problem before the elections in America - and suddenly Ukrainian drones over the front lose their signal. The war is being fought in Ukraine, but the switch, it turns out, is in the hands of a man nobody elected.

Everyone denies it, nobody pressed anything

Then the passing of the buck began. One version says Musk consulted senior administration officials before the restriction, another - that he acted on his own, without an explicit order from the White House. Musk himself had earlier written on X that the US military and the president decide on speed limits and how Starshield is used. Trump, for his part, denies he gave the order: "I don't know who that was, but I'd like to find out." Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth says the Pentagon issued no order - but users must respect the terms set by SpaceX.

Musk points at the military, Trump at an unknown culprit, the Pentagon at the terms of use. To the question of who actually pressed the button - there's no answer. The Balkans knows well what it looks like when decisions made far away change the fate of someone's front line. Has Europe learned the lesson that infrastructure held by someone else isn't yours, however indispensable it is to you?