SpaceX CEO Elon Musk attends a news conference hosted by President Donald Trump with AI executives following a meeting on artificial intelligence, outside the West Wing of the White House in Washington, September 29, 2026.
Finn Gomez | Getty Images
Elon Musk ordered a version of EspaceXStarlink that Ukraine has relied on in its war against Russia, the Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday, citing U.S. officials and people familiar with the matter.
Musk, founder and CEO of SpaceX, “last week capped the speeds at which Ukrainian hardware could stay connected to the satellite network,” the Journal reported. The move rendered some Ukrainian drones virtually unusable, the newspaper said.
Musk and President Donald Trump, who have both recently criticized Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, discussed the decision to limit Starlink “shortly after” the change became public last week, two people told the Journal.
One of the people who spoke with the outlet claimed that Musk discussed the issue with several senior Trump administration officials, including the president himself, before imposing the Starlink speed limit.
The White House and an email associated with Musk did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment on the Journal’s report, released minutes after SpaceX released its latest quarterly results.
The Journal’s story was not mentioned in a subsequent conference call with Musk and investors.
Trump said Monday he didn’t know who ordered the Starlink shutdown, “but I’d like to know.”
The Journal reported that Zelensky’s public complaints that the slowdown would weaken Ukraine’s defenses against Russian attacks led to an informal investigation within the White House.
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