Ukraine Says Missile Warnings Stopped and Starlink Slowed. America Owes an Answer.
Ukraine accused the U.S. of failing to warn it of Russian missile strikes and of throttling Starlink access for its drones. Trump denied cutting intelligence sharing.
For two nights in a row this week, Russian ballistic missiles reached Kyiv before the usual warnings did. At the same time, Ukrainian drones suddenly lost the satellite connection that lets them fly fast. Ukraine's president now says he feels betrayed by the United States, and no U.S. explanation for the Starlink change had been reported as of Wednesday night.
What Ukraine says happened
Ukraine on Wednesday accused the United States of helping Russia by failing to warn it of incoming missile strikes and by hobbling its military through changes to the Starlink system it uses on the battlefield, AFP reported.
According to The Guardian, Ukraine's military said that, without explanation, terminals moving faster than 100 mph lost connectivity overnight. Serhiy Beskrestnov, a military technology adviser to President Volodymyr Zelensky, said it appeared to be a targeted outage. Interceptor drones and strike drones depend on that link. Former defense minister Mykhailo Fedorov later said service at speeds up to 160 kph was being restored, according to AFP's report as published by CNA.
The Associated Press reported that Zelensky said Ukraine did not receive the usual advance warning from its Western partners about the ballistic missiles aimed at Kyiv, though he did not specify which partners he meant. A senior official in Kyiv confirmed that the U.S. had in recent days threatened to stop sharing intelligence about Russian missile launches, AFP reported. Trump denied on Tuesday that his administration had cut intelligence sharing.
The strikes were heavy. Russia launched 39 ballistic missiles and 120 attack drones against Kyiv and Kharkiv late Tuesday, hitting five big power plants and key substations, Zelensky said, according to The Guardian. Those figures are his and have not been independently confirmed. AFP reported that 15 people were killed around the country in the latest round of strikes. That toll comes from AFP's reporting and could change; Dock Line could not independently verify it.
Who controls the switch
Elon Musk, whose company SpaceX builds Starlink, said the decision was not his. Ukraine's military relies on a related network called Starshield. "Starshield systems are owned and controlled by the US government. Any limits on speed or usage are decided by the US military and ultimately POTUS," Musk said, referring to Trump.
Asked whether he felt "betrayed," Zelensky said yes. "It's painful when President Trump chooses one side, not our side," he said. "I think his advisors are wrong." He also allowed for another explanation, telling British broadcaster Piers Morgan: "I hope that it's a mistake, maybe huge technical problem."
The dispute comes on top of Trump's diesel-supply deal with Moscow and the "energy ceasefire" he announced, which Dock Line covered in Trump Declared an Energy Ceasefire. Russia Kept Bombing. The Kremlin said Wednesday it was abiding by that truce because Trump never specified which infrastructure it covered.
Keep your word, even when it costs
Several things are not yet known. No one has publicly proven the U.S. ordered the Starlink slowdown, and Trump denies cutting intelligence. Officials in Kyiv have in the past blamed missed warnings on hard-to-detect Russian missiles or technical problems, AFP noted. Americans should want the facts before passing judgment.
But if the reports are accurate, this is not a small policy adjustment. Warnings about incoming missiles are what send families in Kyiv to shelters and metro stations before the blasts. Quietly throttling them is not leverage over a government. It is risk placed on civilians.
Conservatives can disagree about how much aid Ukraine should get, for how long and on what terms. Those are fair debates. What a great nation should not do is make commitments and then let them lapse without a word, leaving allies to discover the change when the sirens fail to sound.
Psalm 15 describes the person who may dwell with the Lord as one who "sweareth to his own hurt, and changeth not." Keeping your word when it has become inconvenient is a mark of character, for people and for nations. If the administration has decided to change course on Ukraine, it owes Ukrainians and Americans a plain explanation. If it has not, it should say so and get the warnings flowing again.
Hero photo: Support Forces of Ukraine Command via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0, cropped and resized.
