Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said he feels personally betrayed by Donald Trump after it emerged that Ukraine's military has had its access to Elon Musk's Starlink satellite communications system squeezed, raising doubts about long-term US support for Kyiv.
The Ukrainian president, on a visit to London, accused Trump of picking the other side after more than four years of war, risking a breakdown in relations already strained by the US agreeing to buy diesel from Moscow.
Ahead of a meeting with prime minister Andy Burnham in Downing Street, Zelenskyy appeared in a TV interview where he was asked whether the sudden restriction of Starlink was deliberate and if he felt betrayed by Trump.
'Really, yes … but it's a little bit more complicated than just my emotions or my feelings,' the Ukrainian president replied, adding: 'It's a pity that we are losing, we are losing a strong partner.'
Overnight, Ukraine's military reported that, without explanation, the Starlink satellite communications system, produced by Musk's SpaceX but managed by the US government, was no longer working at speeds greater than 100mph. That effectively rendered most of the drones used by Ukraine to strike behind the frontlines inoperable – and, it later emerged, affected the most effective air defence system to stop Russian jet-powered attack drones bombing Kyiv.
'I am sure they knew what they did, absolutely. Because it was 1am at night, Starlink was blocked by SpaceX and the United States,' Zelenskyy said in an interview with Piers Morgan. 'This decision will bring a lot of human losses … Of course, people will die.'
The sudden outage came as Russia launched ballistic missiles at Ukraine without any advance warning from the US for a second night. For years, the US has provided Ukraine with intelligence when strikes were about to take place.
Trump denied that his administration had cut intelligence sharing on Tuesday, but Zelenskyy said in an interview with US broadcaster NPR, aired on Wednesday, that military advisers had received threats from the US that intelligence sharing could be limited in the future.
The US president has demanded that Ukraine stop striking Russian oil refineries, which he has blamed for the high cost of diesel, although most analysts say that the closure of the strait of Hormuz after the US-Israel attack on Iran has had a far larger impact on global energy prices.
The two leaders fell out in the spring of 2025 during a disastrous visit by Zelenskyy to the Oval Office, where the US president said: 'You don't have the cards' to win the war. The row was followed by a brief pause in intelligence sharing and a desperate scramble by European allies to calm the row.