America just refused to explain Ukraine's Starlink cap and missile warning gap
2 hours ago · 20 October 2026Share
Volodymyr Zelensky giving his speech to the Munich Security Conference 2022 in the session on Europe's Permacrisis and Ukrainian security. File photo. MSC / Kuhlmann · CC BY-SA 4.0
So what did he say? Two things are broken, and Washington hasn't explained either one.
First, Ukraine's Starlink terminals got capped at around 100mph. No warning, about six days ago.
Second, Ukraine stopped getting advance notice before Russian missile strikes. Zelensky says that's happened three times recently.
And here's the thing. He didn't raise these as two separate problems. He put them in the same sentence, to the same group of lawmakers.
He says quote "the American side has not given Ukraine any explanation for either of these two problems".
That's him calling it one pattern. Not two glitches. Silence, twice.
The meeting happened less than an hour ago. It was virtual, and it was arranged by Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal and Republican Senator Thom Tillis.
Take the missile warnings first. Those normally come from US intelligence. Without them, Ukraine's air defence has less time to react before missiles land. Zelensky says the first wave of an overnight strike came with no warning at all.
Now Starlink. The speed cap sounds small. It isn't. Ukraine says it cripples the drones it uses to shoot down incoming Shaheds. It also cripples the drones Ukraine sends into Russia to hit oil refineries.
So who ordered the cap?
Three answers, and they don't agree.
Reuters reported that two US officials and a Western official said the order came from inside the White House. Nobody named who made the call.
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A portable satellite internet modem and antenna deployed with the Red Cross in South Sudan. File photo. Miles · CC BY-SA 4.0
A senior US official denied that Donald Trump ordered it himself.
Marco Rubio, the US Secretary of State, said America had nothing to do with it, and that nobody ordered the speed to be slowed down. He said it sort of happened.
Donald Trump himself said he didn't know who did it, that it wasn't him, and that he didn't think it was Elon Musk either. He said as far as he understood, things are the same as they've always been.
And Elon Musk, SpaceX's chief executive, said on X that Starshield belongs to the US government. He said any limits on its speed are decided by the US military, and ultimately by the president.
So Musk is putting the decision back on Washington. Not on his own company.
Britain sees it differently again. Wes Streeting, Britain's Defence Minister, said he and US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth welcomed Starlink service coming back. Asked if the Pentagon had restricted Ukraine on purpose, to stop strikes on Russian energy sites, he says quote "that's not my understanding".
Now the timing. Three days before the restrictions began, Reuters had already reported that the US warned Ukraine to stop hitting Russian refineries, or risk losing intelligence support. Then Donald Trump signed an executive order waiving sanctions on Russia, suspending 500% tariffs on Russian imports and 100% duties on buyers of Russian oil and gas.
Before any of that, twelve US senators, six Republicans and six Democrats, had already written to Donald Trump urging him to rescind his deal with Vladimir Putin.
And Congress is getting louder. Brian Fitzpatrick, a Republican representative from Pennsylvania, says he'll hold anyone who restricted Starshield fully accountable, with hearings and budget cuts on the table. Thom Tillis says he'll ask the Pentagon's Inspector General to investigate. Mike Turner, a Republican representative from Ohio, had already called for a congressional investigation, saying lives are at risk.
During the call, Zelensky showed lawmakers photographs from a Russian drone strike on a park in Nova Vodolaha, in Kharkiv region. Six people were killed, including three children and an infant in a stroller. He linked that strike to Washington easing pressure on Moscow.
The same day, Zelensky met Lockheed Martin's team in Kyiv. He's asking for more Patriot interceptors. Ukraine has reportedly run through its stock.
So what don't we know? Nobody has said, specifically, who inside the US government made the call on Starlink. Nobody has said whether the missile-warning gaps were a deliberate decision or a technical failure. And the White House has not given one combined answer to what Zelensky told lawmakers.
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