Bipartisan group of senators want answers on Starlink disruptions in Ukraine

A bipartisan group of U.S. senators requested that the Department of Defense inspector general investigate why and how key satellite technology supporting Ukraine's military was disrupted this week.

The events had “potentially deadly consequences" for people in Ukraine, including Americans, they wrote Thursday. 

The nine senators, including four Republicans and senior Democrats on Capitol Hill’s committees overseeing national security, said it remained a mystery that satellite infrastructure provided by the American company SpaceX and contracted for use by the Defense Department at points during the week became only partially functional.

The imposition of speed limits on Starshield and Starlink-supported networks, owned by Elon Musk's SpaceX, endangered Ukrainians by inhibiting flight of their military's offensive and defensive capabilities in Russia-controlled Ukrainian territory, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said. The limits appeared to be easing, Zelenskyy said, but it remained unclear Friday why and by whom they were instituted to begin with.

President Donald Trump, who has urged Zelenskyy to order a halt to attacks on energy infrastructure in Russia amid high fuel prices, denied he was responsible.

“I didn't do that. No, we didn't do that at all,” he said Friday, adding the infrastructure was “probably functional.”

Zelenskyy said Ukrainian military officials were told by U.S. counterparts there would be consequences for not halting the long-range strikes on Russian oil refineries, including a suspension of intelligence sharing with Ukraine.

The senators, in their letter to the Pentagon watchdog, demanded to know “whether actions or decisions by the Department of Defense or its contractors contributed to [the] dangerous circumstances” in which Starshield was limited. 

They said both Starlink and Starshield, which support civilian and military networks, respectively, operate under terms of prior service arrangements, some of which is “administered by the US Space Force.”

The group of senators, including Jeanne Shaheen, D-New Hampshire, and Tom Tillis, R-North Carolina, who co-chair a group of NATO supporters in Congress, said American personnel were affected by the disruptions.

“We are particularly alarmed by incidents in which U.S. diplomatic, military, and security personnel were unable to reach designated bunkers during Russian air raids,” they wrote.   

Ukrainian officials have said ballistic missiles this week came without the kind of warning from partners that has been typical in the conflict. 

A western official with knowledge of intelligence sharing between the U.S. and Ukraine said Thursday that sharing had returned and was continuing as normal.

It “remains unclear” to the senators, they wrote, whether these so-called “glitches” early in the week were the result of a change to U.S. policy. They asked Platte Moring, the independent inspector general at the Pentagon, to launch an official probe into the issue.