// ARS TECHNICA — MOBILE & WEB
Musk accuses Ukraine of violating Starlink terms with deadly drone strikes
Ukraine says Starshield back to normal, denies misuse of Starlink commercial service.
Elon Musk accused Ukraine of violating Starlink terms of service by using it for lethal drone strikes.
Musk said Ukraine used the Starlink commercial service for offensive drone strikes. Musk’s comment on Saturday came after SpaceX imposed a restriction preventing Ukraine from using the satellite technology on drones flying above certain speeds.
One current and one former Ukraine official denied Musk’s accusation and said previous limits imposed by SpaceX already prevented Ukraine’s military from using Starlink in the way Musk described. Ukraine officials have accused Musk of throttling their use of Starshield, the military variant of Starlink that Ukraine has access to through a deal with the US government.
Meanwhile, Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said over the weekend that the new satellite restrictions have been lifted, possibly ending a controversy that began almost two weeks ago.
Musk wrote on Saturday that “using Starlink, a civilian commercial service, for offensive drone strikes to kill people has never been allowed, nor should it be. Starshield, a different system, is controlled by the US government. What they decide to do is up to them. Ukraine military violated Starlink terms of service and used it for offensive drone strikes to kill people. That loophole was closed last week.”
Serhii Beskrestnov, a defense technology advisor for Zelenskyy, denied the allegation in a Telegram post on Sunday. Beskrestnov wrote that all Starlink terminals located over Ukrainian territory, including territories occupied by Russia, were already subject to a movement speed limit of 70 to 90 kilometers per hour. He added that Starlink does not function over the territory of Russia.
“Consequently, it is PHYSICALLY IMPOSSIBLE for us to use commercial Starlink for deep-strike or medium-range strike operations,” Beskrestnov wrote. He called it “very strange that Elon Musk is unaware of the operational limitations of Starlink in Ukraine.”
Musk wrote on Sunday that Zelenskyy himself “posted about using Starlink for offensive drone strikes, which has always been against Starlink’s terms of service.” Musk cited a Zelenskyy post in which he said, “We also use Starlink for mid-range strikes against enemy military targets in our temporarily occupied territories.”
The Starlink and Starshield names are often used interchangeably by government officials discussing military use, making it difficult to determine whether certain statements refer to the civilian or military version of the technology. Zelenskyy and other Ukraine officials this month referred to both Starlink and Starshield when they complained that military drones lost satellite connectivity when traveling above 161 kilometers per hour (100 miles per hour).