A decision by Elon Musk led to restrictions on Ukraine's use of SpaceX's satellite communications network, people familiar with the matter told CBS News.

The satellite service, which is used for drone operations, hitting certain targets and protecting sites in Ukraine, was slowed significantly last week.

Musk held multiple conversations with administration officials leading up to the order, the sources said. He wanted clarity on the president's thinking on the matter. Musk has expressed distaste with his company being seen as profiting from the continued war between Russia and Ukraine.

It's not clear how Musk's order to curtail service was executed.

Musk licenses SpaceX's Starshield technology to the U.S. government. He said last week the U.S. controls who can access the technology and what level of service those users receive.

"Any limits on speed or usage are decided by the US military and ultimately POTUS," Musk, the world's richest person, wrote on X.

Musk did not reply to a request for comment. CBS News has reached out to the White House and the Pentagon for comment.

The Wall Street Journal was first to report on Musk's order.

The temporary restrictions came as a surprise to some officials inside the administration, who said neither Mr. Trump nor the Pentagon specifically ordered any limits meant to deliberately disrupt drone operations and battlefield communications.

Mr. Trump said Monday he was seeking details on who ordered the slowdown.

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"I don't know who it was, but I'd like to find out," he said.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Tuesday the Pentagon has not manipulated the service.

"We haven't pulled anything back. There are terms of service that ultimately need to be complied to. And that's where Starlink has the option to make those decisions, but nothing's changed from our view. We haven't made any directives or anything like that," Hegseth told reporters, adding that "we wish the Ukrainians, obviously, success."

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's office told CBS News on Wednesday that Ukraine's use of the system was still throttled.

What is Starshield?

Starshield is a military-grade satellite network made by SpaceX for the U.S. government and its partners. It runs on similar technology to its civilian sister, Starlink.

The U.S. government pays to use Starshield and controls who can access the technology. Its use has been limited to Ukraine and occupied territories. It is not available in Russia.

Starshield is essential to Ukraine's armed forces as it allows personnel to communicate and carry out strikes, including by maintaining contact with drones across long distances.

There is no working alternative to Starlink, which has put a massive constellation of low-earth satellites into orbit, and no direct competitor comes close.

What happened in Ukraine?

Ukrainian officials and soldiers told CBS News the country's military began experiencing sudden difficulties with Starshield equipment late Tuesday, including a throttling effect that made it more difficult to carry out missions with fast-moving drones. Sources in Ukraine's Ministry of Defense said SpaceX had unilaterally imposed the Starshield restrictions.

Regular Starlink terminals have a 70 km/hr speed cap, that is, the speed at which internet can be used in a vehicle in motion. At rates faster than the cap, the internet degrades and is no longer usable.

Starshield has no artificial speed cap and is known to work at speeds of at least 160 km/hr. Strike drones equipped with Starshield cruise at 160 km/h or higher, and they're the backbone of Ukrainian mid-range strikes.

Ukrainian units reported link drops at speeds as low as 90 km/hr, making those drones inoperable. The degradation of Starshield is estimated to have cost Ukraine tens of millions of dollars in losses, according to an analysis by Dimko Zhluktenko, a drone pilot and analyst in the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

Zelensky said Saturday the speed limits had prevented Ukraine from using Starshield to shoot down Shahed attack drones.

The Ukrainian leader wrote on X last week that "the Russians are trying to take advantage of the problems with Starlink in Ukraine, as our interceptor drones depend on this connection among other things."

Zelenskyy has suggested there are still some restrictions. He told NBC News over the weekend the maximum speed was 161 km/hr, and he said Tuesday that he'd spoken with Secretary of State Marco Rubio about "the situation with Starlink/Starshield, which needs to be restored."

The apparent restrictions drew swift pushback from U.S. lawmakers, with a bipartisan group of senators asking the Defense Department's internal watchdog to investigate last week.

"There needs to be an investigation, we need to find out who these people are because lives are at risk and lives are lost over these things," Republican Rep. Mike Turner of Ohio said on "Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan" over the weekend.

Why have Trump and Zelenskyy clashed?

Beyond the Starshield disruptions, Zelenskyy has said in recent days that Russia struck Ukraine without warning from the U.S., and deliveries of key interceptor missiles to Ukraine have slowed down.

A senior Pentagon official told CBS News on Monday there had been "no change to Department of War policy regarding intelligence sharing or any capabilities we are enabling Europeans to provide to Ukraine."

Mr. Trump has grown increasingly frustrated with Zelenskyy in recent weeks, accusing him of not doing enough to seek an end to the Russia-Ukraine war.

The U.S. president argues the war is responsible for high energy prices. His administration waived restrictions on buying Russian diesel earlier this month in an effort to ease pressure on the price of the commodity, a move Zelenskyy argued could embolden Russian President Vladimir Putin. Mr. Trump also waived sanctions on Russia last week.

Mr. Trump said earlier this month that Ukraine and Russia had agreed to stop striking each other's energy infrastructure — announcing an "energy ceasefire." Zelenskyy initially said Ukraine was willing to abide by such an agreement, but that Russia's strikes never ceased, and several days later he told the Financial Times his country would no longer hold off on striking Russian refineries because Russia was still attacking Ukrainian energy infrastructure.

The Russian government never confirmed that it had agreed to a ceasefire.

In a Newsmax interview late Thursday, Mr. Trump called Zelenskyy "not a good guy for us to deal with," and argued Ukrainian strikes on Russian refineries would be a "disgrace," as he urged both sides to make a deal while adding that the Ukrainian leader is harder to deal with than Putin.

"I'm not a big fan of Zelenskyy," Mr. Trump said.

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Wednesday pushed back against suggestions that the Trump administration had ordered Elon Musk's Starlink and its military-grade counterpart, Starshield, to limit Ukraine's access to the satellite communications networks, saying any such decisions were up to the SpaceX founder — and not the White House.

"We cannot direct a private company as to the decisions they make or not make," Rubio told reporters on an overseas trip in Mumbai.

Rubio had stated previously that "nobody" had ordered Starlink's speed to be slowed down, adding that it just "sort of happened."

The secretary of state spoke by phone with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Tuesday in an effort to ease tensions.

Appearing on Fox & Friends on Wednesday, Zelensky said that Starlink connectivity is still limited in Ukraine and was told by Rubio that the U.S. State Department would work to "unblock" the slowdown.

What is Starshield and why is it so important to Ukraine?

Starshield is a low-earth satellite network designed by SpaceX for government use. According to SpaceX, Starshield "leverages Starlink technology and launch capability to support national security efforts."

The Ukrainian military has been using the system for communications between its armed forces, allowing Kyiv to carry out drone strikes against Russia.

Earlier this month, officials in Kyiv said they discovered that Ukraine's access to Starshield had been throttled by SpaceX, limiting its ability to defend itself from Russian ballistic missile attacks on energy infrastructure. 

The Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday that Musk ordered the slowdown after discussions with President Trump about Ukraine's recent attacks on Russia's diesel refineries, which Trump has blamed for skyrocketing U.S. fuel prices.

"Musk capped the speeds at which Ukrainian hardware could stay connected to the satellite-based network," the Journal reported, "rendering some offensive drones and interceptor drones virtually useless."

Last week, the Telegraph reported that Musk has approached Trump with "the idea of slowing down Starlink in Ukraine," and that Trump "agreed." 

In a post on X, Musk said Starshield systems are "owned and controlled by the US government" and that "any limits on speed or usage are decided by the US military and ultimately POTUS."

In response, Trump denied any involvement, saying: "I don't know if it was anybody, but it wasn't me, and I don't think it was Elon." 

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On Wednesday, Rubio insisted that neither the president nor anyone in the administration "ever requested that any changes to that system be made."

But he would not say whether the United States was aware of the decision to limit Ukraine's access to Starshield beforehand.

"I'm not going to comment on what we knew that they might or might not do," Rubio said.

"The president has nothing to do with the decisions that are made by Starlink and Starshield and by Mr. Musk," the secretary continued. "That's a private company. The president doesn't run that company and can't direct that company to do anything."

He added: "I'm telling you there was no foreknowledge, but beyond it, even if there was, we don't control what a private company — how they decide their product can be used."

Rubio: If not for U.S., 'there would be no Ukraine right now'

The secretary also took issue with comments by Serhii "Flash" Beskrestnov, one of Ukrainian Zelensky's military advisers, who told the BBC that U.S. intelligence had also failed to give Ukraine advance warnings of incoming Russian ballistic missile strikes, resulting in the deaths of civilians.

"I don't know who this official was in the Ukrainian Government that went around saying that a bunch of people had died as a result of what America was denying them," Rubio said. "No country in the world has done more to help Ukraine over the last four and a half years than the United States, including under the Trump administration, and that continues to be the case."

He added: "We're no longer going to be defensive about this topic, OK? Because if it were not for the assistance of the United States, including under the Trump administration, there would be no Ukraine right now."

WASHINGTON, Oct 21 (Reuters) - Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said he hoped for a positive outcome from US envoy Steve Witkoff's meeting in Russia on ‌Wednesday and that he supports talks between the leaders of Kyiv, Washington ‌and Moscow.

Zelenskiy said in an interview with Fox News that his talks with Witkoff in Oslo ​a day earlier were productive and that Ukraine was ready for diplomacy. He thanked the US for restoring intelligence sharing and said he hoped the limitations on Starlink and Starshield satellite services would end soon.

"I hope that ... in -- I don't ‌know, some hours -- we will ⁠have some result, God bless, positive," he said of Witkoff's meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Zelenskiy said it was important ⁠to have a freeze in the fighting and move to diplomacy and toward an agreement that includes security guarantees, praising Trump's call for ceasefires.

"It's important to negotiate ​trilaterally" with ​him, US President Donald Trump and Putin, ​Zelenskiy told Fox's "Fox & Friends" program, ‌adding that it would be better if European countries could also be included.

"I always said that we are open to negotiate in any format, any topic. I just ask: but don't speak about us without us, please," he added.

Zelenskiy also said he spoke with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who promised ‌to work to address the issues regarding ​SpaceX's Starshield, which is essentially a military-grade version ​of Starlink developed for the ​Pentagon.

"It's still limited," Zelenskiy told Fox News of the service, ‌a day after the Wall Street ​Journal reported company CEO ​and Trump ally Elon Musk had ordered the slowdown of the technology, which Ukraine relies on to defend itself against missile attacks from ​Russia.

Rubio earlier on Wednesday ‌told reporters decisions regarding Ukraine's access to Starlink were up to SpaceX ​and Elon Musk, not the White House.

(Reporting by Susan Heavey; ​Editing by Doina Chiacu and Andrew Heavens)

Elon Musk said Tuesday he would back a merger of SpaceX and Tesla, as his rocket and AI company reported its first quarterly profit since going public, driven by deals to rent out computing power to AI firms.

Asked about a possible tie-up on a call with analysts, Musk said he felt he was "tap dancing through a minefield," but that a combination would be "a good idea."

Shares in SpaceX shot up nearly five percent in after-hours trading following the comments.

Musk said special committees of independent directors at both SpaceX and Tesla have been set up to study the idea at the request of shareholders.

He added that he could not take part in their talks because he has a conflict of interest.

Musk is chief executive of both companies, and also serves as chairman and chief technology officer of SpaceX.

He owned 48.4 percent of SpaceX as of June 30, according to a regulatory filing, and controls more than 82 percent of its voting power through super-voting shares.

He holds about 20 percent of Tesla.

The committees have not agreed on the terms of any deal and there is no guarantee they will, Musk said, cautioning that it would be overstating it to treat a merger as a certainty.

Any deal would need the backing of a majority of all Tesla shares, not just those cast in a vote, which Musk called "quite a high hurdle."

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He said the two companies could gain from working together on AI software, chip design, robotics and space-based computing.

His remarks came after SpaceX posted net income of $4.4 billion for the July-September period, compared with a loss of $1.1 billion a year earlier.

Revenue jumped 161 percent to $14.6 billion. The quarterly results follow a bumpy start on Wall Street.

SpaceX began trading on the Nasdaq on June 12 after an IPO priced at $135 a share that raised about $85.7 billion.

Its first earnings report as a listed company showed second-quarter revenue of $7.8 billion and a net loss of $541 million.

The AI division, which SpaceX now calls "Super Intelligence," drove the turnaround. Super Intelligence is US President Donald Trump's preferred term for AI.

The unit's revenue rose more than nine times from a year earlier to $7.6 billion, overtaking the Starlink satellite internet business as the company's largest source of sales.

- Cloud computing -

SpaceX credited new cloud services agreements, wider adoption of its Grok chatbot and its acquisition of Cursor, an artificial intelligence coding startup.

SpaceX's cloud customers include Anthropic, which agreed in May to pay nearly $45 billion over three years for computing power at SpaceX's Colossus data centers.

Google signed on in June, agreeing to pay $920 million a month from October through June 2029.

The AI unit turned an operating profit of $431 million, compared with a loss of $1.7 billion a year earlier.

As with other AI companies, spending remains heavy.

SpaceX invested $19.6 billion in the quarter, $16.4 billion of it in AI, bringing capital spending for the first nine months of the year to $48 billion.

Its computing capacity reached 1.7 gigawatts, up from 0.6 gigawatts a year earlier.

Musk said he was "fairly confident" SpaceX could bring an additional 10 gigawatts of computing capacity online in 2027.

That would come on top of the roughly 2.5 to 3.0 gigawatts it expects to have running by the end of this year.

He added that power, cooling and electrical equipment were "somewhat of a limiting factor."

Revenue at the Starlink satellite internet unit grew 69 percent to $5.2 billion, and consumer subscribers reached 13.6 million.

Average monthly revenue per consumer, however, fell to $69 from $83 a year earlier.

SpaceX also completed the first revenue-generating flight of Starship, the giant rocket central to Musk's Mars ambitions and to deploying satellites at scale.

The flight carried 26 next-generation Starlink satellites into orbit.

arp/mlm

US President Donald Trump's pivot away from Ukraine has triggered fresh questions about his attachment to Russian leader Vladimir Putin, the man a top American envoy flattered on Wednesday as a "humanitarian."

Trump has cast his dealings with Putin as part of a mega-deal that has secured the release of American detainee Stephen Hubbard -- and which Trump says will end Russia's war on Ukraine.

At the same time, he has repeatedly berated Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and called for him to be replaced.

"I do things that nobody else can do," Trump told an AFP reporter in the Oval Office on Tuesday when asked about Hubbard.

But for Trump's critics, it is the latest example of his willingness to sell Ukraine down the river, especially as he seeks a deal before difficult US midterm elections in November.

His ties to Putin have long been under scrutiny.

Trump still complains of what he calls the "Russia hoax" following an investigation in his first term into whether his 2016 election campaign colluded with Moscow.

Last week, Trump announced a huge agreement under which he said Russia would release diesel to ease prices sent soaring by the Iran war -- and temporarily eased sanctions on Moscow.

Trump insisted on his Truth Social network that there was "no 'swap' necessary" for Hubbard's release.

Yet in another post minutes later, he admitted that if he had not paused the sanctions targeting Russia, "those negotiations would have come to a complete and total halt."

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- 'WTF, Steve?' -

The US president has also appeared to give diplomatic rewards to Putin -- who masterminded the Ukraine war and has pushed his maximalist goals for more than four years of grinding conflict.

In Saint Petersburg on Wednesday, Trump's special envoy Steve Witkoff told Putin: "You talk so much about my president, President Trump, being a humanitarian -- you are a humanitarian also, sir, and I salute that."

Republican Senator Thom Tillis, a frequent Trump critic in recent months, reacted with astonishment.

"WTF, Steve? Look up the definition of 'humanitarian'," he said in a post on X.

Trump earlier this week confirmed that he was ready to hold a three-way summit with the Russian leader and Chinese President Xi Jinping during which Ukraine could be discussed.

Moscow then announced Wednesday it would restart three-way talks with Kyiv and Washington.

Yet previous rounds of talks, including a Trump-Putin summit in Alaska in August 2025, have produced no breakthroughs.

Ukraine insists it must be included in any talks. But Trump's response was to again blame Zelensky -- whom he berated in the Oval Office in February 2025 -- for not accepting a deal.

"Since Donald Trump has come into office, we have seen some gravitational pull towards the arguments of the Russian president," Liana Fix of the Council for Foreign Relations told AFP.

Many of the voices that once pulled Trump back towards Ukraine are also now silent, said Fix. Staunchly pro-Kyiv US senator Lindsey Graham died earlier this year, and European leaders are dealing with their own problems at home.

- 'Exploiting Trump's nervousness' -

Putin is "exploiting Trump's nervousness ahead of the midterm elections, and he's playing that very well," added Fix.

Trump has been desperately seeking ways to bring down oil prices, as voters angered by the cost of living look set to punish his Republican Party in the November 3 midterms.

Fears have also mounted that Trump is looking to punish Ukraine. He has blamed Ukraine's attacks on Russian oil refineries -- and not his own war with Iran -- for high oil prices.

Kyiv complained that Washington had briefly halted the sending of intelligence to help counter Russia's missile attacks and reduced speeds in the military version of Elon Musk's Starlink satellite system.

"Sometimes I wonder if folks here in the US understand, truly understand, that Kyiv is fighting an existential war against the Russian aggressor," Gian Gentile, a retired US Army colonel and former director of the military history program at West Point, told AFP.

Ukraine has also complained of hold-ups in the supply of vital interceptor missiles.

"There's no question that these actions are intended to hurt Ukraine," Mark Cancian, a retired US Marine colonel and senior advisor at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told AFP.

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