Trump claims neither he nor Musk caused Ukraine Starlink outage

President Trump claimed on Friday that neither he nor SpaceX founder Elon Musk caused Ukraine’s Starlink outage earlier this week as the president clashed with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky over resumed strikes on Russian oil refineries.

“I didn’t do that. No, we didn’t do that at all. In fact, I don’t even think it was slowed down from what I understood. Because I just checked this morning,” Trump told reporters Friday while on his way to a campaign rally in Georgia.

“I heard about it from the news, the media. And we didn’t slow it down at all. And I think it’s probably functioning, from what I understand,” he continued. 

When asked by a reporter if Musk was involved, Trump said, “I don’t know if there’s anybody because it wasn’t me, and it wasn’t Elon, as I understand.”

A White House official similarly told NewsNation, The Hill’s broadcast partner, that “no such request” was ever made by Trump.

The outage was reported by Ukraine on Wednesday, saying that its military lost access to the military version of Starlink, which it uses for vital communications.

Starlink services were cut off specifically for objects that traveled more than 100 mph, impacting the capabilities of Ukraine’s drones, airplanes and helicopters, a source familiar with the matter told The Hill.

At the time, some Ukrainian officials speculated the decision to restrict its access may have come from Washington.

Musk initially deferred to Trump, saying on the social platform X, “Any limits on speed or usage are decided by the US military and ultimately POTUS.”

“Starlink is a commercial service owned and controlled by SpaceX. Usage of Starlink is limited to civilian or defensive activities and cannot be used for offensive military action, as doing so would be inappropriate for a commercial company,” Musk wrote.

The conflict over access to Starlink marked a flash point in relations between Zelensky and Trump as he said the Ukrainian president was “not a good guy for us to deal with.”

Multiple GOP senators expressed concern earlier this week that loss of access to critical Starlink servers had “degraded Ukraine’s ability to conduct defensive operations against Russian drone and missile attacks on civilian infrastructure.”

“Given the potentially deadly consequences, these incidents require immediate investigation,” the group of GOP senators wrote in a letter to Platte Moring, the Pentagon’s inspector general.