President Donald Trump asked Elon Musk in a call to lift Ukraine’s Starlink speed cap, The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday, Oct. 22. The paper cited US officials.
Trump won’t say whether he made the call. But he told reporters at the White House that Musk had restored the service. “The bottom line — he put it back,” he said, Reuters reported.
Kyiv says that isn’t so. On Friday, Oct. 23, an adviser to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Ukraine had seen no lifting of the limits. A defense ministry source and a frontline officer told CNN that drones were still losing signal.
The call matters because of what the administration was saying in public at the time. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Oct. 21 that Washington “cannot direct a private company,” as we reported.
If the Journal is right, the president did not direct SpaceX. He asked, and by the paper’s account the service improved the next day.
What the Journal says Trump asked Musk
Trump told Musk he was frustrated that the roughly 100 mph (160 km/h) cap remained, the Journal reported. Trump had also told aides and allies this week that he wanted the slowdown reversed, the officials said.
An agency report carried by Mint and Mediaite’s summary both put the call on Wednesday, Oct. 21.
The system was working more normally on Thursday, shortly after the conversation, US and Ukrainian officials told the paper. Some Ukrainian officials said it still fell short of full service but ran faster than under the cap.
Musk, SpaceX and Ukraine’s embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to the Journal. The White House pointed the paper to Trump’s earlier denials. He has said he did not ask Musk to throttle the service and does not know who ordered it.
CNN credits the Journal with breaking the story. A person familiar with the matter told CNN that Trump asked Musk “in recent days” to restore Ukraine’s full access. Trump went to Musk after Ukrainian officials reported the disruptions, CNN’s source said. The New York Times also reported the request, and accounts of the call’s exact timing differ.
Trump won’t say whether he made the call
Asked on Thursday whether he had called Musk, Trump sidestepped. “I don’t want to comment on it, whether I called or whether somebody else called, doesn’t make any difference, I guess,” he said, according to Reuters. He added that “my relationship with Elon is a very good one,” CNN reported.
That answer sits awkwardly next to the past week’s denials. On Oct. 16, Trump said of the slowdown, “it wasn’t me, and I don’t think it was Elon,” NPR reported.
Rubio went further in Mumbai on Oct. 21. Neither the president “nor anyone in our system” asked for changes, he said, according to the State Department transcript. In the same remarks he said the speeds were “governed by a private commercial contract.”
Musk has pointed the other way since the cap appeared on Oct. 14. “Any limits on speed or usage are decided by the US military and ultimately POTUS,” he wrote on X.
On Oct. 20, the Journal reported that Musk himself had ordered the slowdown, citing US officials, according to Reuters. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the same day that “we haven’t pulled anything back.”
None of those statements explains who imposed the cap.
Ukraine says its drones are still losing signal
Zelenskyy said on Thursday that Starlink speeds had not recovered, Reuters reported. He said he hoped to speak with Rubio in the coming days. “Now it’s still limited,” he told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour, according to the Kyiv Post. He said an Iranian-designed attack drone can fly at 450 to 500 km/h, far above the cap.
On Friday, his adviser Serhiy Beskrestnov was blunter. “At this time, we are not observing any lifting of restrictions on Starlink,” he said, according to CNN. He said any faster connections were “likely due to the SpaceX algorithm or specific usage conditions, rather than a lifting of the restrictions.”
A Ukrainian Defense Ministry source told CNN that “instances of signal loss are still being observed” above about 100 mph. A Ukrainian officer described the effect at the front. “The connection drops out for 10 to 15 seconds,” he told CNN.
Not everyone sees a standstill. Michael Kofman, a war analyst at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, sees some progress. He told the Journal that Ukrainian units report early tests showing the system working more regularly.
Why the speed cap matters for Ukraine’s air defense
The cap does not slow data. It cuts the link when a terminal moves faster than about 100 mph. Ground stations keep working, but fast aircraft drop off. That hits Ukraine’s interceptor drones hardest, the ones it sends up against Russia’s jet-powered attack drones.
The pressure on those defenses has not eased. Russia launched 176 attack drones on Thursday night, Ukraine’s Air Force said, according to CNN.
The episode also lands in a tense week between Washington and Kyiv. Reuters noted that Trump recently announced a deal to buy Russian diesel and waived new sanctions on Moscow. He has also told Ukraine to stop hitting Russian refineries.
A Senate inquiry sets November deadlines
Congress wants the question of who set the cap answered on paper. On Thursday, Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, the senior Democrat on the Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, wrote to Hegseth, Reuters reported. He asked whether the White House, the Pentagon or SpaceX directed the change.
The episode “raises urgent questions about who possesses the technical and legal authority to alter these capabilities,” Blumenthal wrote. A Pentagon spokesperson said the department “will respond directly to the authors.”
Democrats are in the Senate minority and cannot issue subpoenas, so Blumenthal can only request answers.
He wants the Pentagon’s answers by Nov. 5. He also asked for a briefing by Nov. 12 from SpaceX officials who know about the restriction.
The questions carry extra weight because Musk also co-directs the Pentagon’s Project Meridian.
Before those deadlines, Zelenskyy expects another call with Rubio. Ukrainian officials say they are still waiting for Washington to tell them whether the cap is coming off.
