Reuters probe finds order blocking Ukrainian access to vital Starlink network came from White House

The order to restrict Ukraine’s access to Starshield, the version of SpaceX’s Starlink satellite communications network optimised for military use, was issued by the White House, Reuters reported on Friday.

Although the news agency said it had been unable to establish who exactly had ordered the controversial move, which has undermined multiple operations being undertaken by the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU), one of the agency’s sources did confirm that the instructions had not come from US President Donald Trump himself.

The AFU found out in real time that its access to Starshield had been severely restricted, it announced on Wednesday, just days after the simmering tensions between Kyiv and Washington once again boiled over into a public war of words, and, in Trump’s case, personal attacks.

On Tuesday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that allied intelligence agencies had failed to warn Kyiv of two imminent Russian missile strikes on the capital, something that NATO sources later attributed to technical issues caused by poor weather conditions.

US officials initially denied that the AFU had been shut out of its most vital technological resource in the war against Russia, and on Thursday, a source at Ukraine’s Defence Ministry told state-owned news agency Ukrinform that Kyiv’s access to the Starshield system had been fully restored.

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has been at pains to stress that Starshield is controlled by the US government and that only Washington could have imposed restrictions on Kyiv’s system access. The White House has yet to make an official statement on the issue.