Musk suggests US govt behind any slowdown in Ukraine's Starshield system

For more on this, I'm joined by our foreign affairs editor, Kethevan Gorgostani. Good morning, Kethevan. Where do things stand when it comes to these disruptions that have been reported by Ukraine in the Starshield system? Well, look, it seems that some of the connectivity, the speeds of connectivity, have been restored at around 160 kilometers per hour. That's according to the former Ukrainian defense minister, Mykhailo Fedorov. But it's not back at full capacity just yet. that's at least according to the Ukrainians. And more importantly, we still don't know exactly why or who ordered those restrictions on the speed of Starshield. That's, of course, with Elon Musk pointing the finger to the U.S. government, basically saying it's not us. He posted on X, Starshield systems are owned and controlled by the U.S. government. Any limits on speed or usage are decided by the U.S. military and ultimately POTUS, the President of the United States, so clearly Elon Musk there pointing to the U.S. government. The White House has not publicly confirmed or denied that it was actually involved in that decision. But it seems that Ukraine actually believes that it was the Trump administration and it was a decision because it is paired with that withholding of intelligence when it comes to incoming Russian missile strikes. And on that point, Donald Trump did deny that the U.S. had halted intelligence sharing. But Volodymyr Zelensky has said it very clearly. He doesn't believe that these two things were technical glitches or problem. He believes that there was a will there. And what the Ukrainians think is that there was a message sent by the Americans. This was a warning shot. This is what will happen if you don't do exactly as you were told. And for Volodymyr Zelensky, it's also a realization when it comes to that message. He said it's painful when President Trump chooses one side and it's not our side. He said that he was fine when Donald Trump was in the middle between Russia and Ukraine, that he understood not taking sides. But he said, if you don't take sides, then you need to stay in the middle. Now, we heard from UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham earlier on saying that he wants to heal the rift between the Trump administration and Ukraine. But that's a rift that is just continuing to grow. Absolutely. And Volodymyr Zelensky talked about a betrayal of Donald Trump towards him. And he did this very fiery interview with the Financial Times when he was asked exactly that. Do you think that what are you willing to do to repair that rift? And he said, we didn't destroy the relationship. It's not up to us to sort of mend fences with the United States. And this all started unraveling about a week ago when Donald Trump announced that diesel deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin. And then a day later, seeing the criticism coming from Volodymyr Zelensky about that deal, saying it was unfair, saying it was helping Russia, Donald Trump went on to say that, well, Ukraine should get a new president. And after that, it really started getting more and more tense. And Donald Trump then announced that so-called energy ceasefire, even though neither Russia nor Ukraine seemed to know about it beforehand. The Ukrainians said, we didn't know about it, but we're willing to go ahead and not strike energy infrastructure. But they immediately pointed to the fact that while they were stopping, the Russians were continuing to hit energy infrastructure without any consequence from the United States. And that's where you see sort of the frustration of Volodymyr Zelensky spilling out into the open, which is we're trying to do everything we've been told to do. But whenever Russia does something like that, they never pay the price. And so he said, it's a pity we are losing a strong partner. He was speaking to Piers Morgan in London after that meeting with Andy Burnham. And Donald Trump is not on the right side of history. It seems that the Ukrainian president is sort of coming to grips with the fact that he is, in part, losing American support. But he also said that he was not going to, you know, take it sitting down. And this idea of an energy ceasefire, he said to the Financial Times, the bloc on attacking refineries, it's out. We are done. And we saw that the Ukrainians have resumed striking Russian oil refineries. He also has made it very clear he knows that not having American support is going to make things extremely hard. He turned to the Europeans, said that he needed Europeans more and more if the Americans are going to be less and less involved in Ukraine. And so you could say at this point, given where things stand, it could change very quickly, that we're probably at the lowest we've been between Ukraine and the United States since that now infamous Oval Office meeting that turned into a shouting match between Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelensky that was back in February 2025. Thank you very much for that. Katarzyna Gordyńska, our international affairs editor.