October 14, 2026
On Tuesday night, the Ukrainian government announced that its access to SpaceX’s Starlink satellite internet service had been restricted. The news ignited a wave of criticism, with some accusing the government of being foolish to rely on the technology of Elon Musk — a far-right billionaire.
According to the New York Times , Ukrainian authorities believed that the order restricting Starlink came “from Washington” as the U.S. president Donald Trump pressured Kyiv to end the war in order to prevent attacks on Russian energy facilities ahead of the 2026 congressional midterm elections.
Musk — who is the largest donor to Trump’s campaign and has donated more than $276 million to the Republican Party since July — has been under pressure to rein in payments for SpaceX contracts, which totaled $1.5 billion in 2023.
Ukrainian military observer Serhiy Beskrestnov wrote on social media about the sudden limitation of Starlink coverage. “Ukrainian military have not received any warnings about this Starlink withholding, which has caused several mission failures for us,” he said. The reason for the problem was, according to him, “obviously connected to the current situation in Washington.”
The Kyiv Independent noted on Wednesday that Starlink has several uses for the Ukrainian military, including “its mid-strike campaign in Russian-occupied Ukraine, as well as interceptor drones that defend against Russia’s new jet-powered attack drones.”
The Polish minister of foreign affairs, Radoslaw Sikorski, reacted particularly strongly to the news. He wrote on social media: “Hey, Elon Musk, big man, are you playing politics with your products again? As your European clients, we are watching you.”
Ian Bond, deputy director of the Center for European Reform, believes that the episode “should set off a siren in all defense ministries in Europe.” “There needs to be a lot more urgency in getting out capabilities that are autonomous, not subject to the caprices of the United States, for early warning of attack, for countering ballistic missiles, for communication with one’s armed forces or for controlling offensive weapons,” he said.
Gideon Rachman, chief foreign affairs commentator at the Financial Times , believes that “the Starlink restriction over Ukraine is a perfect illustration of the danger of relying on US technology.”
Steve Peers, professor of EU law and human rights law at Royal Holloway, University of London, believes that “it is time for democracies to treat Elon Musk and his companies as a geopolitical adversary.” Peers wrote on his blog that if Musk “is going to (in effect) assist Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, then sanctions against Starlink, X and Tesla ought to be imposed by Ukraine’s allies.”
Nicholas Grossman, professor of international relations at the University of Illinois, believes that he has been warning governments for three years about the dangers of relying on the technologies of Elon Musk. “The problem is too much power – and that is dangerous, especially for an opponent of democracy,” Grossman wrote.
Grossman also criticized the Biden administration, which has been accused of not taking the threat from Musk seriously enough. “While Biden was turning a blind eye to Musk’s threat to democracy, the latter spent hundreds of millions of dollars bankrolling Trump’s electoral campaign and presidential transition,” he wrote.
