President Volodymyr Zelensky said Saturday that Ukraine’s Starlink-based systems are fully functional again. Elon Musk, conceding in a post that he was behind the service slowdown, responded by saying that they’ve been misused. Starlink and its military offshoot Starshield are back to previous speeds, Kyiv announced, after more than a week of limits that Ukraine says slowed air defenses and forced some missions to be scrubbed, Reuters reports. “The speeds are now where they need to be,” Zelensky posted on X, per the AP.
Hours later, Musk wrote on X that Ukraine’s military had broken Starlink’s rules by using it to guide offensive drones, adding, “That loophole was closed last week.” A Ukrainian presidential adviser countered that the country can’t technically use Starlink for medium- or long-range strikes. The slowdown was instituted after President Trump’s move to buy Russian diesel and his push for Kyiv to halt attacks on Russian refineries; Reuters has reported the Starshield throttling order came from inside the White House. The change caused the Ukrainian military to lose contact with its drones and fly them slowly, which made it easier for Russia to down them, per the Wall Street Journal.