Officials say connections still drop for drones flying faster than 160km/h, a day after Donald Trump said Elon Musk had restored Ukraine’s access.
Speed restrictions on Starlink satellite internet in Ukraine are still in place, Ukrainian officials said on Friday, contradicting US President Donald Trump’s claim that the service had been fully restored.
Five Ukrainian officials familiar with the matter told Reuters that the restrictions, which disrupt connections for drones flying faster than 160km/h (100mph), were still in force.
Trump said on Thursday that Elon Musk, chief executive of Starlink’s operator SpaceX, had restored Ukraine’s access. The Wall Street Journal reported the same day that Trump had asked Musk to lift the restrictions.
The caps have been in place since 13 October, as relations between Kyiv and Washington have deteriorated.
“We are currently not observing any lifting of speed limits on Starlink,” Serhiy Beskrestnov, an adviser to President Volodymyr Zelensky, said on Telegram.
“There are isolated instances where Starlink may travel slightly faster than the speed limit, but this is likely due to the SpaceX algorithm or specific usage conditions,” he said.
A source at Ukraine’s defence ministry and two other officials familiar with the matter also confirmed the restrictions were still in place.
Zelensky has said the restrictions make it harder for Ukraine to fight off Russian jet-powered drone attacks on its cities. Russian missile and drone strikes killed more than 80 people across Ukraine in four days earlier this month.
The curbs have also hampered operations along the front line, where Ukrainian forces use Starlink terminals to fly drones into Russian-occupied territory.
“Our people are waiting for positive news, hoping that the restrictions will be lifted and our defenders will have the capabilities they need to protect lives,” Denys Sienik of the Ukrainian embassy in the US said on X.
“Unfortunately, as of today, nothing has changed. We continue to wait.”
Ukraine’s problems with Starlink began after Trump agreed a deal allowing Russian diesel on to world markets and waived new sanctions on Moscow. He has also told Kyiv to stop striking Russian oil refineries and said Zelensky should be replaced.
Earlier this month, Ukrainian officials said US envoys had raised the prospect of cutting off intelligence sharing unless Kyiv halted the refinery strikes. US officials denied making the threat.
Reuters reported last week that a satellite system Ukraine uses for battlefield communications and drone operations had been throttled following an order from inside the White House.
The curbs have also drawn criticism in Washington. Republican congressman Brian Fitzpatrick said this week that any move to limit the use of “Starshield” intelligence to warn Kyiv of Russian attacks would be “fully investigated” by Congress.
He threatened “harsh and punitive budget cuts” for any agency responsible. Starshield is SpaceX’s satellite service for government and military customers.
Fitzpatrick was one of five Republicans who joined 17 Democrats in a letter urging Trump to apply new Russia sanctions passed by Congress “to their fullest extent and without delay”.
Starlink has been central to Ukraine’s military communications since the first weeks of Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022, when SpaceX began shipping terminals to the country.
Musk said in March 2025 that Starlink was the backbone of Ukraine’s military and that its front line would collapse without it, while insisting the company would never switch off its terminals there.
Poland has said it pays for a large share of the Starlink subscriptions used by Ukraine’s forces.
Russia has been sending growing numbers of high-speed, jet-powered drones at Ukrainian cities since the summer. In one overnight attack on 7 October, it launched 46 of them, and Ukraine’s air force said it shot down just over 80%, up from 50% to 60% in previous weeks.
European governments have looked for alternatives to Starlink since Musk’s comments in 2025. France’s Eutelsat said that year it was in talks to expand its OneWeb satellite service in Ukraine, though its network of a few hundred satellites is far smaller than Starlink’s constellation of thousands.