Ukraine's Starshield satellite internet functionality has been fully restored, a source in Ukraine's Defense Ministry said on Thursday, a day after the crucial service was throttled at speeds of over 100 miles per hour.
The source said the Defense Ministry would continue to seek clarification on the reasons for Wednesday's disruption of the military-grade version of SpaceX's internet service, which affected drone missions across the frontl ine.
“As of now, Starshield’s work in motion has resumed and continues, we record this in reports from units,” the Ukrinform news agency quoted its Defense Ministry source as saying.
Ukrainian officials said on Wednesday that the functioning of Starlink’s military-grade service Starshield had been interrupted when terminals were moving at high speed, hampering Ukrainian drones for attack missions and air defense.
The reasons for the difficulties were not immediately clear but followed a souring of relations between U.S. President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, after Trump announced a deal to waive sanctions on Russian diesel and called for Zelensky to be replaced.
Zelensky has said that Ukrainian military officials were warned by their U.S. counterparts that Washington would block intelligence unless they halted strikes on Russian energy infrastructure.
In an interview with the Financial Times published Thursday, Zelensky said the suspension was presented to Kyiv as a technical glitch, but he dismissed the idea that the failures of the Starlink satellite system might have been caused by a fault.
“It was not a technical problem, it was the will,” he told the FT.
Trump said on Tuesday that the U.S. was still sharing intelligence with Ukraine. E SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, which operates Starlink, said the U.S. government controlled the system's speeds.
Separately, Zelensky said that, for the second night running, Ukraine had received no warning from its partners of a Russian ballistic missile attack on Kyiv.
Reuters contributed reporting.
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