Ukrainian Starshield Connection Restored After Two-Day Outage Amid Conflicting Accounts

A source in Ukraine's Defense Ministry announced the restoration of the military Starshield connection after a brief outage that reports indicated was imposed by the United States.

Starshield is the military version of the internet service provided by SpaceX through a network of 11,000 satellites in low Earth orbit, launched in 2022 to serve the U.S. government. Ukraine relies on it to exchange intelligence information in its confrontation with Russia, as it enables deeper encryption for processing sensitive data. SpaceX says the service is used primarily by U.S. defense agencies and their other government partners.

Reuters reported that Kyiv is still seeking an explanation from SpaceX about the cause of the outage between Tuesday and Wednesday. For his part, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk denied any involvement by the company, noting that only the U.S. government holds the authority to cut the service. President Donald Trump, however, rejected this characterization, asserting that Washington continues to share intelligence information with Kyiv.

What remains unresolved: There is no official explanation about who issued the decision to cut service, and neither SpaceX nor the U.S. government has officially confirmed the reason.