The key facts
- Trump: “It wasn’t me, and I don’t think it was Elon”
- Zelensky: the service was not fully shut down, but speed was restricted
- Kyiv received signals from the White House about full restoration of the service
Trump denies involvement in Starlink disruptions
US President Donald Trump on Friday, October 16, denied that he had given an order to temporarily halt Starlink operations for the Ukrainian army. Answering a journalist’s question at the White House about whether he or the service’s owner Elon Musk had decided to suspend access, Trump said: “It wasn’t me, and I don’t think it was Elon.” According to him, as far as he knows, “everything is the same as it has always been.”
Zelensky on the Starlink situation
President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky said the same day that Starlink was not fully shut down in Ukraine, but speed restrictions made it difficult to use the service for some military and humanitarian purposes. Speaking on the sidelines of the EU leaders’ summit in Brussels, he added that Kyiv had received signals from the White House that the service would be fully restored.
