US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said decisions over Ukraine’s access to SpaceX’s Starlink satellite network rest with Elon Musk’s company, not the White House, amid conflicting accounts of restrictions affecting Kyiv’s military operations, The Telegraph reported.
‘It’s a private commercial contract,’ Rubio told reporters in Mumbai on Wednesday, according to Reuters. ‘The US government can’t tell a private company how to operate its technology.’
“I’m not aware that we knew about this decision beforehand. But that’s irrelevant,” Rubio said.
These comments came after a Wall Street Journal report that Musk had instructed a slow down of Starshield, the military satellite service used by Ukraine, which could impede the country’s efforts to defend against Russian missile strikes.
The paper wrote that the issue was discussed between Musk, President Donald Trump and White House officials. Reuters, citing US and Western officials, reported that the White House was the one that finally decided to limit access to Starshield – an accusation the administration denied.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the outages hit both Starlink and Starshield, while Rubio asked whether Ukraine had been given Starshield.
The conflict has sparked concern over the role of privately owned satellite technology on Ukraine’s fighting capability and Washington’s support of Kyiv.
