Ukraine has restored a version of its Starlink satellite connectivity system after restrictions curbed its battlefield use, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a statement.

Known as Starshield, the military-grade version of SpaceX’s Starlink has been a critical part of Ukraine’s drone forces, letting Kyiv use advanced unmanned combat-vehicle technology to resist the numerically superior Russian army.

“Starlink and Starshield operations have been restored to the speeds we had before the restrictions,” Zelenskyy said in an Oct. 24 social media video. “The speeds are now where they need to be.”

Starlink founder Elon Musk said that Starshield is a different system controlled by the U.S. government and that Starlink’s purpose in Ukraine is to be a civilian commercial service, noting that using it “for offensive drone strikes to kill people has never been allowed, nor should it be.”

“Ukraine military violated Starlink terms of service and used it for offensive drone strikes to kill people,” he wrote in an X post on Oct. 24. “That loophole was closed last week.”

Musk said that if Starlink were to be turned off, “the Ukrainian front line would collapse immediately.”

“This is NOT a threat, it is simply a statement of fact,” he said.

Earlier this week, Ukrainian officials said SpaceX had restricted some Starlink/Starshield services without warning, a move they said undermined combat missions and threatened Kyiv’s ability to disrupt Russian drone attacks.

Later, British Defense Secretary Wes Streeting said after meeting with U.S. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth that Ukraine’s access to Starlink/Starshield had been restored, although Ukrainian officials continued to complain that the speed of the service was being throttled.

On Oct. 23, U.S. President Donald Trump said he believed that SpaceX CEO Elon Musk had restored access to the service, vowing to intervene directly with Musk if that turned out not to be the case.

Zelenskyy said on the morning of Oct. 24 that after Trump told reporters he would speak with Musk if needed, Starlink/Starshield speeds were back.

“The restoration began overnight, and by this morning, speeds were already sufficient,” Zelenskyy said. “This matters: for our frontline logistics, for defending Ukraine against jet-powered ‘shaheds.’”

Russia recently expanded its attack arsenal to include jet-powered drones, which are much faster than piston engine-driven systems and harder to intercept.

According to the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War, throttling Starlink/Starshield to about 100 miles per hour made it harder to intercept even the slower piston-engine Geran drones because the helicopters Ukraine uses to transport SpaceX systems on the battlefield fly faster than that speed.

Ukrainian Defense Minister Yevhenii Khmara told reporters on Oct. 24 that the ministry’s monitoring systems now reported stable connections for objects traveling faster than roughly 250 miles per hour.

It remains unclear how the speed curbs were initially imposed. Musk said it was not SpaceX’s doing, as Starshield systems are owned and controlled by the U.S. government.

“Any limits on speed or usage are decided by the US military and ultimately POTUS,” Musk wrote in an Oct. 14 social media post.

SpaceX has restricted Starshield and other Starlink services to Ukrainian forces over Russian territory under geographic restrictions, limiting Ukraine’s access to its borders.

Ukraine has recently taken to attacking oil refineries in Russia and other infrastructure that it says is being used by Moscow’s military in its war against Ukraine.

Trump has repeatedly criticized Zelenskyy for striking Russian refineries, blaming the strikes for sending U.S. diesel prices to record highs.

The Trump administration has intensified its mediation efforts to help settle the war in Ukraine at the negotiating table.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov recently announced that trilateral peace talks between the United States, Russia, and Ukraine will take place in the United Arab Emirates during the first half of November.

Peskov did not rule out the eventual participation of a special envoy from the European Union as the talks gain momentum, but he said the Abu Dhabi format in November would be trilateral.