Zelenskyy accuses SpaceX of not being honest about Starshield limits

Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Friday that the speed cap on Ukraine's Starshield satellite system has been in place for five days, telling the Guardian and other reporters at the presidential palace in Kyiv that Ukrainian drones can no longer fly faster than 161km/h (100mph) and lose their connection above that.

The fallout is immediate: incoming jet-powered Russian Shahed drones can no longer be intercepted, and Ukraine's mid-range strikes against military targets in Russian-occupied territory are severely affected. Zelenskyy said he asked his military leadership to raise the issue with Elon Musk's SpaceX, the Pentagon and the US state department.

SpaceX's answer isn't buying him off. The company told Kyiv it was imposing no restrictions, Zelenskyy said, rejecting the explanation outright. According to the Guardian, he said SpaceX called it some kind of technical issue: 'We do not believe that is the case.' He added that Ukraine tests the problem in different directions every day and gets the same confirmation, calling it widespread rather than isolated and present across the 'entire frontline'.

Ukraine suspects the slowdown is a deliberate US tactic to pressure Zelenskyy into concessions to Vladimir Putin. It follows a similar issue last month and coincided with US-brokered talks in Abu Dhabi last week featuring Ukrainian and Russian representatives. The Kremlin insists Ukraine hand over the entire eastern Donbas region.

Zelenskyy also revealed that US negotiators Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff asked whether Ukraine would give up the Donbas in exchange for Nato membership or Nato-like security guarantees. The details were vague, he said, and no US peacekeeping troops on the ground appeared to be part of it. He ruled out handing more land to Russian 'terrorists' and said the war can only end with a ceasefire alongside security guarantees underwritten by western partners.

On Putin's offer of a 'humanitarian mission' in the eastern city of Kostiantynivka, Zelenskyy was blunt: 'It's an absolutely primitive move.' Russia has called for a five-day ceasefire modelled on last month's truce in Russian-occupied Oleshky. Zelenskyy said civilians had already fled Kostiantynivka as street-by-street fighting continued with huge Russian losses, and that when he proposed repeating the Oleshky truce in nearby occupied towns along the Dnipro River, Putin rejected it. Putin's real goal, he said, is to swallow Kostiantynivka along with the garrison cities of Sloviansk and Kramatorsk. He called Russia's revived push to redraw Europe's security architecture 'concerning', noting the Kremlin wants Nato back to its pre-1997 configuration — a demand Putin first made in 2021. 'Putin's desire to change borders in Europe is a fact,' he said, stressing: 'We cannot turn everything upside down.' He said meetings with European leaders in Dublin brought pledges from Denmark to supply ammunition for F-16 jets and energy support packages for Kyiv and other cities, that Russia was 'betting everything' on its winter campaign, and that the US Congress could push Putin to de-escalate by passing sanctions laws and arming Ukraine.