Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he felt personally betrayed by Donald Trump after it emerged that the Ukrainian military had had its access to Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite restricted, raising doubts about long-term US support for kyiv.
The Ukrainian president, visiting London, accused Trump of choosing the other side after more than four years of war, risking a breakdown in relations already strained by the United States’ agreement to buy diesel from Moscow.
Before a meeting with Prime Minister Andy Burnham at Downing Street, Zelensky appeared in a television interview where he was asked whether the sudden restriction of Starlink was deliberate and whether he felt betrayed by Trump.
“Really, yes… but it’s a little more complicated than my emotions or my feelings,” the Ukrainian president replied, adding: “It’s a shame that we are losing, we are losing a strong partner.”
Overnight, the Ukrainian military reported that, without explanation, the Starlink satellite communications system, produced by Musk’s SpaceX but managed by the U.S. government, was no longer operating at speeds above 100 mph.
This effectively rendered most of the drones used by Ukraine to strike behind the front lines unusable – and, it later emerged, affected the air defense system most effective in preventing Russian jet attack drones from bombing kyiv.
“I’m sure they absolutely knew what they were doing. Because it was 1 a.m., Starlink was blocked by SpaceX and the United States,” Zelenskyy said in an interview with Piers Morgan. “This decision will result in a lot of loss of life…of course people will die. »
The sudden outage came as Russia launched ballistic missiles at Ukraine without any prior warning from the United States for a second night. For years, the United States provided intelligence to Ukraine when strikes were about to take place.
Trump denied that his administration had reduced intelligence sharing on Tuesday, but Zelensky said in an interview with US broadcaster NPR, broadcast on Wednesday, that military advisers had received threats from the United States that intelligence sharing could be limited in the future.
The US president has demanded that Ukraine stop hitting Russian oil refineries, which he blames for the high cost of diesel, even though most analysts say the closure of the Strait of Hormuz after the US-Israeli attack on Iran has had a much bigger impact on global energy prices.
The two leaders fell out in the spring of 2025 during a disastrous visit by Zelensky to the Oval Office, where the American president declared: “You don’t have the cards” to win the war. The feud was followed by a brief pause in intelligence sharing and a desperate scramble by European allies to quell the feud.
Burnham met Zelenskyy at Downing Street on Wednesday, hours after he promised MPs that Ukraine’s president would “not leave empty-handed” and instructed officials to develop new sanctions and options for accelerating military aid.
As the two men met at Number 10, he pledged that Britain’s support for Ukraine would remain constant. “You have seen the solidarity and support you have received from everyone here in Britain. We are behind you and that will not change,” he said.
Zelensky met King Charles at Buckingham Palace earlier on Wednesday.
In brief remarks to reporters, Zelenskyy said he hoped to improve access to Starlink and intelligence sharing during his meeting with the British prime minister.
Burnham promised he would accelerate the supply to Ukraine of British lightweight multi-role missiles, which the country uses to counter Russian drone strikes, and said he was pursuing “all possible avenues” for additional support.
The prime minister also said he was ready to discuss Trump’s proposed ceasefire over attacks on energy infrastructure, but acknowledged that Moscow had failed to respect it.
“Unfortunately, what we have seen from Russia are further attacks on critical national infrastructure in Ukraine,” he said.
Earlier, Burnham told PMQ MPs he wanted to be “cautious” about potential criticism of Trump that could risk escalating tensions, saying he was “laying the groundwork” for reconciliation: “I will listen carefully to President Zelenskyy, but he will not leave Britain today empty-handed. »
The meeting, which lasted just over an hour, began when Burnham greeted Zelenskyy with a hug in Downing Street, before the two men walked to the door of No 10 and posed for photos, flanked by Irish guards in full ceremonial uniform.
Musk said the decision to cut Starlink was not made by him. The communications system is not directly licensed to weapons customers, and the Ukrainian military was linked to a related network called Starshield, operated by the U.S. government.
“Starshield systems are owned and controlled by the U.S. government. Any limits on speed or use are decided by the U.S. military and ultimately POTUS,” Musk said, referring to Trump.
Terminals traveling at more than 100 mph and using a version of Starlink for the military and other national security agencies suddenly lost connectivity, said Serhiy Beskrestnov, Zelenskyy’s military technology adviser, in what appeared to be a targeted outage intended to disrupt military operations.
“Our armed forces did not receive warning about these restrictions, which led to the failure of a number of missions,” said Beskrestnov, who is also a popular military blogger. “It is clear that this action cannot be a coincidence and is linked to the current political situation.”
Limiting Starlink’s access speeds would have a significant effect on Ukraine’s air defense because it is used, according to Beskrestnov, in “the most current effective solution”: interceptors that target the Shahed jet drones now deployed in large numbers to bomb Ukraine.
“Through their actions, our partners are depriving us of one of the few chances we have to defend ourselves,” he added in a follow-up article. Shahed’s interception rates had already fallen from more than 90 percent to around 60 percent when Russia upgraded its engines to jet engines earlier this summer.
It also complicates Ukraine’s use of medium-range, medium-strike drones to strike targets in its Russian-occupied territories. But, ironically, this would have no impact on Ukraine’s deep bombing of oil refineries, because kyiv is prohibited from using Starlink to hit targets in Russia.
Russia carried out a massive strike against Ukraine’s energy infrastructure on Tuesday evening, Zelensky said, launching 39 ballistic missiles and 120 attack drones against kyiv and Kharkiv. The strikes hit five major power plants, key substations and other infrastructure that sustain major cities, including Kyiv.
At least 600,000 people are now without power, he said, adding that outages could become widespread.
Trump announced an “energy ceasefire” between Russia and Ukraine last week that has not been confirmed. Zelensky said he hadn’t heard about the deal until Trump announced it on his Truth Social site, and the Kremlin claimed Wednesday that it was honoring the ceasefire because Trump had not specified what energy infrastructure it included.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters: “The energy truce proposed by Trump has not been spelled out in detail, so it cannot be claimed that Russia is not respecting it. »
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