JOINT BASE ANDREWS, Md. — Secretary of State Marco Rubio set the record straight Saturday on claims out of Kyiv. Asked whether the United States had anything to do with Ukrainian reports of Starlink disruptions earlier this week, Rubio did not mince words. “No,” he said. “It wasn’t deliberate. We had nothing to do with that.”
“I’m not sure Zelensky knows what he’s talking about,” Rubio said. “The United States, nobody ordered that Starlink speed to be slowed down. It sort of happened, but my understanding is it’s been restored. It’s back to where it was before.” When reporters pressed him on a report claiming otherwise, he called it “just categorically false. No one at the White House ordered anyone to slow down internet or slow down speed so that certain drones couldn’t use it.”
Rubio also cleared up the confusion between two very different products. “Starlink is a commercial product, okay? And so it’s regulated and handled as a commercial product,” he said. “Starshield is a defense product, a military product,” one the U.S. military uses under contract.
“I know Ukraine wants access to Starshield. They do not have Starshield now,” Rubio said. “They’ve asked for access to it in order to conduct deep strikes inside of Russia. They do not have access to it at this moment.” That request, he said, is under discussion.
The bottom line: President Trump’s team is focused on ending this war, not playing games with anyone’s internet. Rubio left Saturday night for Uzbekistan and India to keep building America’s partnerships. Watch the Secretary in the State Department video above.
