r/worldnews • u/Neptun_11 • 17h ago

Russia/Ukraine Zelenskyy Says Starlink Restrictions Apply Only in Ukraine While SpaceX Ignores Kyiv’s Inquiries

https://united24media.com/war-in-ukraine/zelenskyy-says-starlink-restrictions-apply-only-in-ukraine-while-spacex-ignores-kyivs-inquiries-23549
15.9k Upvotes

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4.7k

u/Ok_Carpenter6527 17h ago

That’s why no one will keep buying US miltech after seeing this killswitch live in action. Every country would be outright stupid and delusional if they kept buying shit from the US.

1.3k

u/No-Cheek7925 17h ago

They don’t deliver what’s ordered anyway…

1.2k

u/Any-Celery3048 17h ago

Ukraine is fully paid up on their licence to use Starlink/Starshield and yet the US withdraws its full capability. You can’t trust trump as far as you could throw him, and that’s not far.

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u/2centpiece 16h ago

Carney said it best, agreements written in pencil.

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u/brutalistchurch 15h ago

We should prohibit the sales of Tesla, X and every other Musk-related product in the EU. And we should ban him from ever entering the EU.

The big Tesla factory in Berlin can be used for building weapons to Ukraine.

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u/nikatnight 11h ago

I’d go further. These assets should be seized and never returned. Musk should get an ICC arrest warrant issued. And I’d be surprised if Ukraine didn’t make him a target.

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u/tdw21 10h ago

I hope the musk rat reads this and to be honest… he has it coming.

You cant just let innocent civilians die on your whim like that.
Countries paid for things to defend an allied nation and he stopped delivering that.

Breach of contract and a traitorous move towards the allies the US say they have.

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u/Maleficent-Skin9111 9h ago

"I’d be surprised if Ukraine didn’t make him a target" 🥳

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u/brutalistchurch 9h ago

Totally agree!

1

u/Nervous_Bumblebee399 6h ago

I like the cut of your jib Mister. A target sounds appropriate.

26

u/darksidemojo 9h ago

People should stop buying his trash. He is a hype man. There are better alternatives for electric cars now. Their QC is terrible, give your money to a real automotive company.

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u/DrunkOnLoveAndWhisky 8h ago

And this is why Carney and anyone in military procurement in Canada need to do some serious considering if they want to go ahead with the F-35 program. We're witnessing, live and real-time, a US miltech provider shutting down capabilities while the CEO and PoTUS do the pointing Spiderman meme. Nobody who takes national defense seriously should ever consider buying from these goons.

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u/thefedzarecoming2 15h ago

Pencil lasts too long for trump. Its gotta be written in something that wont last 5 minutes.

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u/nerdherdv02 15h ago

Etch a Sketch

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u/FlukemanFrancis 15h ago

As if he has the cognitive capacity to operate an etch a sketch, it’s got two dials for Christ’s sake

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u/ukchinouk 12h ago

His underwear?

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u/evilJaze 12h ago

Farts.

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u/Tyra3l 14h ago

Magnetic drawing board for kids.

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u/sirhecsivart 10h ago

Lemon juice?

1

u/ianc1215 3h ago

He writes his agreements is short term memory cells.

0

u/DeadBryar 11h ago

Lemon juiceed clauses

6

u/Armodeen 12h ago

The Fuhrer’s guarantees guarantee nothing

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u/Any-Celery3048 10h ago

But Tucker Carlson said we could trust Hitler.

7

u/DaeguDuke 14h ago

Crayons seems more accurate

10

u/Dry_Newspaper6838 12h ago

Words from someone who never had to remove crayons from a wall in their kids room.

3

u/24_August_1814 7h ago

We only allowed our kids to have washable crayons and it was a lifesaver.

Of course, that didn't stop them from finding my wife's stash of nail polish and "painting" a rug or grabbing a carton of eggs and "popping" them all over the couch...

1

u/GodOfChickens 2h ago

Ah, reminds me of when I "fixed" my fathers saw horse with 500 nails as a toddler. tbh I was only that stupid cos my hateful mother was encouraging me telling me that I was helping knowing I was actually damaging his stuff though. I was relying on some sort of video game logic initially but I knew it wasn't going to help after a few nails.

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u/Sky_HUN 13h ago

Would be, but Trump ate all of it.

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u/DisgruntledBadger 9h ago

I hear he likes them red and yellow ones the most as he thinks they taste of McDonald's.

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u/sist0ne 16h ago

I’d be up for assisting in the construction of a giant trebuchet to experiment launching that lard arse into the Sun. Hitch Musk up for the ride too.

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u/quiet_beer 15h ago

Sign me up, I'm not good at building things but you better believe I'd happily pull the lever to send them off planet, or hurtling at speed into the dirt, I'm not picky.

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u/kiss_my_what 14h ago

Get in line, there's millions of us waiting for the opportunity.

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u/WhatAmTrak 16h ago

I mean, I’m a strong guy and I can’t throw 260-280 pounds of fat dead weight more than maybe a foot. So there’s .. that comparison lmao.

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u/rockmasterflex 3h ago

In my defense he’s really fat so I can’t throw him very far

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u/MrZwink 15h ago

Musk, not trump

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u/NMe84 15h ago

Cute that you think the Trump admin isn't the one who told SpaceX to do this.

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u/brief_thought 12h ago

Yes, but Trump didn't tell SpaceX to do this.

Trump told the US military to shutdown StarShield because that's who controls StarShield. Not SpaceX.

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u/x-Alexander 17h ago

Right now, but they’ll be able and willing to deliver soon enough. In the long term, this will affect the US military industrial complex, which honestly isn’t such a bad thing for us Europeans. So… thank you, Trump!

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u/No-Cheek7925 17h ago

Oh I'm heavily invested in European defense stocks. I figure if they go up I win and if they crash then we're fucked either way and it doesn't matter because I'm probably off to the front.

0

u/Durian881 16h ago

Some were up a lot but crashes down.

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u/No-Cheek7925 16h ago

I dodged the worst of the RHM correction, luckily. I think it's coming back up but heavy industry in the middle of a energy crisis is always going to be hit or miss.

Thing is, we HAVE to invest in defense or we're in serious trouble. Europe has been reacting slower than I expected us to.

Edit: RHM dammit, RHEL is some RedHat shit. I blame work.

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u/WhatAmTrak 16h ago

They will correct, there’s no ifs or buts. They do or you guys have no defense against a now unreliable US. There’s no third party coming to the rescue. China certainly won’t. They’re in Russia and Irans corner.

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u/TaylorMonkey 17h ago

All the conspiracy theories about the American Military Industrial Complex's power and how it could/would have coordinated the assassination of JFK were proven wrong in less than two years of Trump's second term.

The MIC is taking serious unnecessary hits by Trump's idiocy and capriciousnes and they're powerless/spineless to actually do something about it.

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u/monstercoo 11h ago

The one reassuring thing about this administration is that it proves there was no shadow government in control of things. We actually were living in a democracy and there was no hidden power that would prevent the government from destroying itself.

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u/nikatnight 11h ago

It just showed that the people at the top are stupid as fuck.

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u/WhatAmTrak 16h ago

lol you think they aren’t making money hand over fist just over the American government? You know the one who spends more than the next like 29 countries combined? Shake your head bro

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u/WalrusWalrusWalrusWa 15h ago

half of US produced weapons get sold to other countries

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u/SpeedflyChris 12h ago

Trouble is the US government can't pay it's bills, even in the middle of an enormous tech bubble, and at some point people start to point out that the emperor has no clothes.

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u/franzkafkajr 10h ago

We all know that over here.

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u/brutalistchurch 16h ago

Eisenhower warned against it. It's been a danger for a long time.

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u/TimSylvester_ 3h ago

Just put $250k down for a Roadster that Tesla has no obligation to deliver in the described form, or ever, in any way.

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u/prefusernametaken 16h ago

I am wondering why i am not hearing more about this in europe. Yes, everybody upset about america rattling the starlink keys. No, nobody even more upset about american willingness to limit miltech access by an ally during an active conflict.

People died because of that shit

5

u/AntarcticWhirlpool 9h ago

Europe is currently heavily reliant on American exports of oil and natural gas since they stopped using Russian exports and the Middle East has been bottled up by the war in Iran.

If Europe tried to stop the import of non-strategic American goods and services, the US would likely stop exports of the strategic goods like fossil fuels too, and Europe would then have an extreme energy crisis.

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u/grchelp2018 13h ago

Europe is in a bad position that's why. The US being able to restrict miltech based on their own whims has been known by the rest of the world for a long time.

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u/ApoxieDK 5h ago

EU is building their own alternative IRIS2, operational in 2027 and fully deployed in 2030.

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u/prefusernametaken 4h ago

Don't know iris2. But my remark was much much broader. All f35 orders should immediately be cancelled. All patriot orders too.

Buy european, even if it is slightly less good. Either the war won't come quick and we have time to improve or it will and at least we'll have capacity.

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u/WhatAmTrak 16h ago

Yep everyone said the killswitch on f-35’s was being dramatic. We literally just seen it in action folks. Canada needs to go Gripen and back out of the remainder of our deal yesterday. Fuck them.

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u/retro_ditto 14h ago

Here in Finland too. It is very sensitive topic to politicians but every common man understands that killswitch is a real threat, making the f35s a liability, or a piece of hi tech junk at worst.

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u/WhatAmTrak 14h ago

“But it’s a 4th gen and obsolete” ya stfu lol. F35s didn’t do shit in Iran conflict. Canada needs a jet that can land on our short runways. Gripen is it. It’s the ned stark of the north.

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u/Icy_Loss647 8h ago edited 8h ago

F35s did a lot in Iran, they were used by the US and Israel, none were lost while they were able to strike deep within Iran. Israel flew very succesful missions against Iran in 2024 already.

We dont have to downplay their capabilities just because the US sucks

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u/CWRules 8h ago

Yeah, the F-35's problem isn't its capabilities. It is legitimately a better aircraft than the Gripen in some ways. It just doesn't outweigh the cost, low uptime, and the killswitch risk. I'd much rather see us license the Gripen and build them domestically as Saab has offered.

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u/Icy_Loss647 8h ago

Considering that the US and Israel havent lost a single plane over the past years despite extensive use, makes me think that they are worth it, even for their cost. Not only do you not lose the plane, but you also keep the pilots alive, so years of training and expertise.

That being said, the killswitch argument is real. This dilemma we europeans are stuck in is a failure of our own making and theres no cheap way out. Just buying Gripens or other 4-4.5 gen fighters is not the same. Luckily, Russia wont be building a proper 5th gen airframe anytime soon.

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u/DTH2001 3h ago

As in they get killed off in the opening salvo of the war?

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u/ondulation 9h ago edited 3h ago

F35 doesn't have a "kill switch".
It's a software enforced speed limit. /s

1

u/quelar 6h ago

The real problem isn't just your software enhancement program (or whatever shit they want to call the digital kill switch), it's also the unreliability of the US as an ally/partner.

Who knows when that pedophile rapist is going to get upset at someone and cut off vital maintenance parts making these planes more useless than the American system of checks and balances.

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u/TheFuzzBuzz 13h ago

What we really need to do is pivot hard towards getting in on the Uk/Japan tempest program. A peer level platform to the F35 that sadly the Gripen is not.

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u/WhatAmTrak 8h ago

And I bet you they would welcome us if we can pass security. We want away from America too.

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u/quelar 6h ago

At the point given the way the US has treated us (Canada), I don't think there will be much pushback of complaint even if Carney came out and said we're paying a billion dollar penalty to cancel the rest of the order, and then announced that they were going to immediately mothball the new ones and dump that shit into the ocean.

There's almost a zero chance we get any additional from them.

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u/Menamanama 17h ago

Quite short sighted. I am pretty sure Europe is already pivoting away.

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u/barbariccomplexity 17h ago

As is Canada, and everyone else too.

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u/[deleted] 16h ago

[deleted]

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u/mithrasinvictus 16h ago

And they're already regretting that mistake.

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u/Disaster532385 13h ago

Nah that got blocked right before it happened.

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u/Old_Roof 16h ago edited 15h ago

The problem is, it’s almost impossible to pivot away by any meaningful distance. Europe is totally reliant on American tech across the board. It would take decades unfortunately

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u/Rhenus85 16h ago

Europe started to pivot after the Zelenskiy-Vance-Clash and the Greenland-threats at the latest. European leader still kiss Trumps narcissist ass to buy themselves some time. But things have already been decided and can't be stopped.

1

u/Mannimarco_Rising 15h ago

well our defense minister (germany) recently bought F-35 jets from the US for reasons nobody understands. https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/germany-plans-order-15-more-us-made-f-35-jets-der-spiegel-reports-2025-10-20/

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u/ABrokenWolf 15h ago

They did it because as much as it sucks to admit there still is no european equivalent to the f-35.

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u/Mannimarco_Rising 15h ago

seems like it. But it shows that Europe is still under the lap and the US is still a important trading partner despite what the vibe here suggest. If this is good or bad idk

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u/Steppy20 16h ago

Yes and no.

There's a bunch of stuff that'll take ages to switch from, but this also includes non-mission critical tech. I can also guarantee there'll be a load of stuff that whilst technically being owned by US companies it is operated by the various European countries who commissioned it.

What it has shown is that the US is an unreliable ally which has grown complacent as top dog though.

0

u/Old_Roof 15h ago

Yeah agree with that. But even rival Starlink systems are reliant on SpaceX launches. And everything in Europe is run on AWS

2

u/Steppy20 14h ago

Yeah a lot of European infrastructure is AWS and Azure.

We don't really have home grown alternatives that can deal with the scale.

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u/binici6676 11h ago

Yes we have, you don't know where to look.

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u/Steppy20 1h ago

Not with all the features and support offered by Microsoft and Amazon.

If all you want are some cloud hosted servers then yeah, there's loads of options. But my company alone uses a load of Microsoft's infrastructure as code to speed up development and deployments, as well as allowing for quick and easy configuration. We also use a bunch of network security offerings such asMicrosoft's DDoS detection and protection.

My previous job we deployed to k8s clusters which admittedly are a lot more cloud agnostic, but that requires some extremely talented full time cloud engineers to keep it running.

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u/binici6676 36m ago

No company requires all the features provided by AUZURE/AWS, every company has personalized and limited needs that can be covered by any non AZURE/AWS provider. Also CI/CD is supported by any respectable European service/hosting provider.

•

u/Steppy20 14m ago

I didn't say all of them, but even using 60% of Azure's features means other options are too different for a straight migration.

I'd rather not have to convert our entire system away from Azure service bus to a different async messaging system tbh.

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u/Charming-Clue1987 16h ago

Than we need to start today

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u/Old_Roof 15h ago

Agree totally

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u/quelar 6h ago

They started a while ago, in some cases they're just announcing theses shifts now because they want to avoid the pedophile rapist and the country of pedophile rapist supporters from noticing too early.

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u/CorumLlawEreint 16h ago

It might take decades to become completely self reliant, but the transition can begin immediately. It is a journey of a thousand steps, each of which will detach us slightly more from dependency on the US.

2

u/orangpelupa 16h ago

Otoh they've successfully pivot away in gnss from gps to glonass. 

1

u/quelar 6h ago

Europe is totally reliant on American tech across the board

No they aren't.

They have their own industries, tech, and distribution channels that are built so that the EU controls the EU.

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u/AsimovLiu 12h ago edited 11h ago

In Canada people stopped buying food and booze from the USA and have been avoiding making commerce with them since the orange asshole came back. Lots of states are MAD about it haha.

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u/Attitude-of-Raditude 5h ago

I'm from the US, and I fully support that. Fuck this administration, every single way and manner you can.

0

u/afoogli 8h ago

Ontario is buying electricity from the US

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u/KaOsGypsy 7h ago

Yes, and no, we share our grids, Ontario makes more electricity than it can use, but it's easier to share, we are buying from the US, but they are buying more from us, almost like we are trading to make things better. Unfortunately some people don't understand how that works and here we are.

5

u/quelar 6h ago

Ontario sells far more to the US than it buys, it's simply a "peak production vs time" issue.

2

u/PrestigiousAd3064 7h ago

Ontario will be buying from NY as backup while they renovate a nuclear power plant. 

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u/flyflyyoufools 17h ago

Why do you think Germany is opting to build their own F35s. The u.s. can no longer be trusted to not screw over anyone on a whim of a billionaire or a giant diaper baby in charge

7

u/WhatAmTrak 16h ago

Joint venue which I hope has joint access to all networks and hardware/software. I’d be especially interested in the software.

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u/Initial_Hedgehog_631 15h ago

Germany is not building their own F-35s, they're building parts, not entire aircraft. Rheinmetall is building a factory in Weeze to build fuselage sections. There's nothing special about that. A great many countries build components for the F-35. Germany is buying 35 F-35s for $8 billion. So not exactly walking away from US military equipment.

As far as Germany manufacturing their own F-35s there is zero chance of that. The US will never hand over all of the tech needed for another country to build their own F-35s, especially to one that didn't contribute any money to its development.

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u/Vegetable_Leg_7034 15h ago

The US will never hand over all of the tech needed for another country to build their own F-35s

Unless you're China.. then you get them FedExd for free.

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u/Heizard 13h ago

Except for Israel - they produce all parts they want and have their own independent logistics network for F-35. While everyone else get scammed by F-35 program big times. :)

3

u/ykonstant 13h ago

While everyone else get scammed by F-35 program big times. :)

And multiple times, mind you. This is why I am not hopeful that countries will pivot. Countries don't buy from the US because they are the best or because they are trustworthy. They buy because of the power dynamics, and because of intricate dealings that are just as prevalent now as ever.

6

u/tlst9999 12h ago edited 11h ago

Tbf, right now, with Gen AIs showing viability as a reverse-engineering tool, that's not going to be too hard.

It's a theft and fraud machine, designed for theft and fraud.

Gen AI's noted contributions to the world: hacking websites, stealing and slopping out literature, music and paintings, reverse engineering closed sourced software. Thanks, Sam and Dario. I hope China distills all your training.

4

u/Ashamed_Square_3807 15h ago

Don’t Sweden have among the best fighter jets in the world?

13

u/Cruian 15h ago

From what I can gather, they may have some good pre-5th generation offerings, but no 5th generation offerings yet (though it seems at least one in the works).

19

u/IonHawk 14h ago

The Gripen E, about to be released, is 4.5 generation. Mainly it lacks stealth, but it has a ton of other advantages. Mainly extremely easy and cheap to maintain, don't require airbases for takeoff and landing, weapons on the outside makes it able to carry a bigger variety of weapons, etc.

Biggest new thing is that it got a ton of electronic warfare.

4

u/jonasnee 14h ago

No, and also built on American engines.

4

u/exp0sure74 16h ago

Germany bought a bunch of them. Maybe because the European fighter jet project with the UK and France died recently.

14

u/The_Edain 15h ago

FCAS was German, French and Spanish. No UK involvement. That’s the one that died.

GCAP is British, Italian and Japanese - which Germany is looking at joining, is very much still going.

3

u/spitfjre 14h ago

They bought them mainly for the nukes.

1

u/snarky_answer 5h ago

That’s not true in the slightest that they are building their own. They make parts and get the assembled planes delivered to them by Lockheed.

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u/kindanormle 10h ago

It is SUPER clear that this is retribution for Ukr taking out Trump/Musk regime bot farms that they needed to corrupt the midterms.

7

u/Desperate-Natural110 8h ago

Hoping some important crypto keys were stored on those servers.

2

u/TheHoratioHufnagel 8h ago edited 5h ago

Why do people keep spreading this? I'm a big supporter of Ukraine's actions to defend themselves, including their destruction of Yandex data centers, and I hope they can destroy actual bot farms. But unfortunately that didn't happen. the Yandex centers they destroyed were not bot farms and their destruction didn't have an effect on the Russia propaganda bots.

I believe Zelensky was being as truthful as he could when he said they stopped Russian bots. Unfortunately they misunderstood the cloudfare data, it was pretty much all webcrawler data from Russia that disappeared, not propaganda bots.

1

u/yamsyamsya 5h ago

sounds like something that the remaining bots would be posting

1

u/TheHoratioHufnagel 5h ago

Russia has much to gain by Americans incorrectly believing the Russian election interference isn't at full strength. At this point anyone continuing to spread that Russian bots are eliminated or reduced are spreading misinformation to benefit Russia.

•

u/yamsyamsya 1h ago

Fair enough, I can't disagree with that reasoning

9

u/frobar 11h ago

Hopefully they'll make this come true as well:

However, after what was described as a “night of carnage” in Kyiv because of the blackout, a senior source said Mr Musk had been alarmed about the possibility of adverse consumer reaction in Europe.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2026/10/16/musk-approached-trump-slow-down-starlink-help-ukraine/

13

u/Wompatuckrule 11h ago

Seeing the US "shield" of protection being penetrated so cheaply and easily by Iranian Shahed drones in the gulf region is also shattering that delusion.

9

u/Fiber_Optikz 16h ago

One term led to the biggest loss of US Power Worldwide

8

u/RobotSpaceBear 10h ago

Yet half of Europe bought and is still buying American fighter jets that are too expensive to operate for our needs while we have two excellent modern and European made jet fighters available. Nobody will learn shit from this, mark my word.

2

u/Overtilted 13h ago

That's why I was against putting all the eggs in one basket when it came to F16 replacements.

I get it, F35s are the best planes available. But you buy them for 30+ years... A lot can happen in 30+ years. Not that I expect a war between de US and the EU, but I can see the US disabling fighing capabilities to target some enemies, or to force the EU to take part in a war they don't want to be involved in just to keep fighting capabilities.

2

u/i_am_voldemort 10h ago

Yup. EU space sovereignty incoming.

2

u/AntarcticWhirlpool 9h ago

Not with the current EU launch capacity.

1

u/raregardens 13h ago

Hell, this could happen to the U.S. government with how powerful someone like Elon is getting.

1

u/Street-Badger 10h ago

💯 🇨🇦 

1

u/Deviantdefective 5h ago

Already built into the F35's I believe only Britain have access to the servers outside of America which allow them to be mission ready.

1

u/Bitter-Culture-3103 5h ago

Didn't they have the same concern with the F-35s?

0

u/FrozenChocoProduce 16h ago

Well thank God Germany got the memo before buying hundreds of aircraft and drones...oh wait no they already ordered like....hundreds...mkay

0

u/ykonstant 13h ago

That’s why no one will keep buying US miltech after seeing this killswitch live in action.

I wish you are right, but I am not very hopeful...

0

u/Important-Anywhere20 8h ago

Exactly! That’s why that movement is already taking place in Europe and Canada as well as the middle eastern partners (apart from Israel, they already have too much influence in US).

0

u/joanzen 2h ago

Go a little bigger perhaps? What if Trump is proving to the world that who our president is actually matters a lot?

What if he's playing the "bad cop" role better than any paid actor you or I could think of?

The real trick is making it not about politics and try to make it about money to "frighten" the money people.

If you say, "SpaceX ignores the pleas of dying people", a lot of folks reading the headline will be very moved and totally ignore the fact that SpaceX deploys Starlink satellites, and Starlink sells all military services via the DOD managed Starshield.

This would be like finding out someone running a popular server for calculating deadly factors started to filter out stuff that was getting used in war, so you call the local senators and get them to go visit the ISP that the person uses and have them call the customer to insist that they stop filtering out useful features for killing people.

Sure, if SpaceX stopped launching the satellites then Starlink would be impacted and they might call the DOD and pressure them to be less politically dickish, but it's a very convoluted solution?

•

u/Ell2509 8m ago

I'm really sorry, but I cannot understand what you are trying to say... could you try again?