As President Trump’s senior envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner landed Thursday in a snowy Moscow to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said connection issues with the Starlink satellite network were again affecting his country’s ability to defend itself from incoming Russian missiles and drones.
Zelenskyy said Ukrainian forces using Starshield, the military version of Elon Musk’s Starlink network, which was also impacted last month, were again facing a “systemic speed restriction.”
Ukrainian interceptors, used to shoot down Russian weapons, have been losing their Starshield satellite guidance connection this week if they try to fly faster than about 100 miles per hour.
“Unfortunately, our units have been recording significant malfunctions in Starshield’s operation over Ukraine’s territory for several days now: along the entire front line and in temporarily occupied Ukrainian territory,” Zelenskyy said in a social media post. “Ukrainian military personnel have already investigated the circumstances, and these are not random errors but a systemic speed restriction. For us, this primarily means a significant increase in the difficulty of intercepting Russian jet-powered drones.”
A Ukrainian official confirmed the restrictions to CBS News, saying “the speed limitations as of now are on Ukrainian occupied territories and across the contact line. The contact line is the first line of our defense and the first point for interception of Russian drones. It started gradually 3 days ago and now it’s 100%.”
Overnight, Russian drones hit an apartment building in Kyiv, killing one woman, according to authorities, while more energy infrastructure was hit in Rivne in Ukraine’s northwest, leaving more people in the dark and cold as temperatures fall.
Earlier this week, a Russian strike in the Odesa region killed three people, and multiple strikes across the country caused energy grid disruptions.
“Starshield services must be restored urgently for Ukraine to keep its soldiers connected, to protect its citizens and to defend its territory,” European Commission spokesman Thomas Regnier said at a news conference in Brussels.
Zelenskyy did not blame anyone for Ukrainian forces’ latest problems with the Starshield system. However, one Ukrainian source told CBS News they “are certain” that SpaceX implemented the restrictions, as officials in both the U.S. and Ukraine said was the case during last month’s outage.
People familiar with the matter told CBS News that Elon Musk himself made the decision to reduce Starshield service in Ukraine last month, after multiple conversations with Trump administration officials.
As both sides carried on with their daily attacks — Russia said more than 70 Ukrainian drones were intercepted Thursday, including several headed for Moscow — Witkoff and Kushner carried on with their shuttle diplomacy.
Their meeting with Putin in Moscow came after the first round of U.S.-brokered talks between the two countries since February concluded on Wednesday with an announcement of plans for a new prisoner exchange and a commitment to keep talking, but nothing to suggest a wider peace deal could be in the offing.
Sputnik/Vyacheslav Prokofiev/Pool/REUTERS 
Speaking after the two-day talks, Kushner, who is President Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser, said he wanted European countries to be involved in the peace process, something both Ukraine and its European partners have long pushed for.
Russia, however, accuses America’s European NATO allies of being a party to the war Putin launched more than a decade ago, and ramped up significantly with the ongoing full-scale invasion in February 2022.
Speaking Wednesday, Kushner said the U.S. envoys would “see if we can get the Europeans added to the format, so we can make this a multilateral format.”
He said “the only way to get this done is to have them by our side.”
During the same briefing after the trilateral talks in Abu Dhabi, Russia’s chief negotiator Vladimir Medinsky made Moscow’s position on Europe clear, telling reporters: “We do not really understand what there is to discuss with them, and they haven’t offered a single proposal.”
Major hurdles to a peace deal remain, including Putin’s demand for Ukraine to surrender all of its eastern Donbas region — roughly 20% of Ukraine’s overall territory — including some areas Russian forces haven’t managed to wrest control of by force. He also wants guarantees that European countries will back off from involvement in Ukraine’s security going forward, while Kyiv has long sought membership in the NATO alliance.
Witkoff and Kushner were set to fly from Moscow to Dublin, Ireland, later Thursday to meet with Zelenskyy for further discussions.
Zelenskyy, in Dublin ahead of the U.S. envoys’ arrival to attend a European Political Community Summit with fellow leaders, again noted the Starshield restrictions Thursday, and he alleged that “Putin has told people close to him he wants to destroy life in major Ukrainian cities — Kyiv, Dnipro, Kharkiv, Zaporizhzhia, Odesa and other cities.”
State Emergency Service of Ukraine/Handout/REUTERS 
“If someone in America is making decisions that essentially treat Ukrainian territories as if they don’t belong to Ukraine, then that tells us where things are heading,” Zelenskyy said. “We must be clear and never, under any circumstances, recognize the Russian occupation of Ukrainian territory.”
Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: cbsnews.com
