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By Jordan King
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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Russia had launched thousands of attacks this past week before Elon Musk’s SpaceX restored its Starlink and Starshield satellite internet service in the country.
Zelensky said in an X post on Sunday that Moscow launched about 1,600 guided aerial bombs, 48 missiles, including ballistic missiles, and nearly 2,300 attack drones in the past week. “Unfortunately, almost every day, these brutal strikes leave people killed and injured,” he said.
It came a day after Zelensky said Ukraine’s access to Starlink and Starshield satellite links, which the country uses for military communications, drone operations and frontline logistics, had been restored to the speeds it had before restrictions were placed that disrupted frontline operations for more than a week.
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“The speeds are now where they need to be,” Zelensky wrote on X, adding that restoration began overnight and were sufficient by Saturday morning, improving frontline logistics and defense against Russian jet-powered Shahed drones.
Musk said Kyiv violated SpaceX’s commercial terms of service by using Starlink for offensive drone strikes—an allegation Ukrainian officials have denied. However, Musk noted that the U.S. government controls any operational changes to Starshield, the military-grade version of the service that serves as the backbone of Ukraine’s defense communication and drone network.
President Donald Trump, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth have denied any administration involvement in the service disruptions.
Newsweek has contacted SpaceX and the White House, via email outside of normal working hours, for comment.
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Russia’s Attacks Last Week: Zelensky
Zelensky said four people were killed and another 22 injured, including an 11-year-old girl, in attacks on the Dnipropetrovsk region Saturday evening.
Six people were injured after a drone strike on an apartment building in Vinnytsia and emergency workers were wounded in a repeat strike in Kharkiv, where “the Russians first struck a home improvement hypermarket and then carried out a cynical double-tap strike on the emergency services that arrived at the scene,” the Ukrainian president added.
Russia has not directly responded to these reports, but the Russian Defense Ministry said on Sunday it hit a logistics center in Kharkiv that was used for the storage and distribution of cargo for the Ukrainian military, Reuters reported. Newsweek contacted Russia’s ministry of defense via email on Sunday for comment.
The attacks Zelensky described took place during a week when the restrictions on Starlink and Starshield services hampered Ukraine’s ability to intercept some Russian drones, according to Ukraine’s defense ministry.
White House Denies Ordering Slowdowns, Musk Defends SpaceX's Role in Ukraine
Ukrainian officials said access to Starlink and Starshield had been restricted in the country without advance warning and that SpaceX had placed a speed limit on Starlink terminals earlier this month, disrupting battlefield operations.
Ukraine has targeted Russian oil and gas facilities in an effort to curb energy revenue used to finance Moscow’s war. Russian President Vladimir Putin has said Ukrainian refinery attacks have cost Russia roughly 1 percent of its gross domestic product.
Moscow, meanwhile, has continued targeting Ukrainian energy infrastructure.
Trump has pressured Ukraine to stop striking Russian oil facilities as high diesel prices remain an issue in the United States ahead of the midterms. Trump blamed Ukraine’s attacks for contributing to those prices, while his administration moved to allow Russian diesel back onto global markets and relaxed sanctions to authorize imports into the U.S.
Meanwhile, Musk distanced himself from the situation and said the U.S. government had the final say before saying that Ukraine had violated the terms of service.
“Using Starlink, a civilian commercial service, for offensive drone strikes to kill people has never been allowed, nor should it be,” Musk wrote on X on Saturday. “Ukraine military violated Starlink terms of service and used it for offensive drone strikes to kill people. That loophole was closed last week.”
Ukrainian officials pushed back on Musk’s claims, with Serhii Beskrestnov, a defense technology adviser to Zelenskyy, saying long-standing restrictions on the civilian system in Ukraine made such offensive use impossible.
“It’s very strange that Elon Musk doesn’t know about the restrictions on Starlink’s operation in Ukraine,” he wrote in a Telegram post.
Beskrestnov said the drones operated via the civilian Starlink system had a speed restriction of 43 to 56 miles per hour within Ukraine and did not work in Russia. “Therefore, we physically cannot use commercial Starlink for deep strikes or medium-range strikes,” he said.
Meanwhile, Reuters reported last week, citing two U.S. officials and a Western official briefed on the matter, that the order to slow the service came from inside the White House. The officials did not identify who made the decision.
However, a senior U.S. official told Reuters that “no such request was ever made by the president.” Rubio also disputed suggestions that the U.S. government was responsible for decisions involving the slow down. Rubio said the U.S. and Trump had “nothing to do” with Starlink’s decisions.
Zelensky thanked Americans after connectivity was restored, saying in a video on Saturday posted to X: "I thank all Americans and all our partners who took this seriously and truly helped – members of Congress, senators, all the media, the State Department, and the President. Protecting lives matters."
Newsweek reporters and editors used Martyn, our AI assistant, to produce this story. Learn more about Martyn here. Contact Newsweek editors on this story: Anthony Murray and Matthew Robinson.
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