How Warsaw views the Starlink restriction: Poland pays for the service for Ukraine, and Sikorski tells Musk he's being watched

Overnight on Wednesday, SpaceX restricted part of the services of the military version of Starlink for the Ukrainian army, and according to an advisor to the Ukrainian president, this thwarted several combat missions. Aktuality.sk ↗ Slovak wire service reports note that this happened amid a dispute between Washington and Kyiv over strikes on Russian refineries, but Poland does not appear in them. TASR ↗ Yet it is Warsaw that, by its own account, pays roughly 50 million dollars a year for Starlink for Ukraine, and Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski sent Musk a message that European customers are watching him. TVN24 ↗

What happened and what Kyiv says

According to the British Guardian, terminals of the military version of Starlink lost connection on Tuesday evening while moving at speeds above 160 kilometers per hour. Regular terminals, according to Ukrainian sources, continue to function. Presidential advisor Serhiy Beskrestnov wrote that Ukrainian forces "received no warning about these restrictions" and that several missions therefore failed. According to him, this "cannot be a coincidence" and is linked "to the current political situation." Activist Serhiy Sternenko, who was the first to report the outage, claims SpaceX "probably did this at the request of the Trump administration." The Guardian ↗

This is a suspicion, not an established fact. Neither SpaceX nor the US government has explained the restriction in the reports we had access to. However, domestic and foreign media describe consistently the context into which Ukrainian advisors place it. The Trump administration is demanding that Ukraine stop attacking Russian refineries, and Zelenskyy noted on Tuesday that Ukraine again received no warning from Western allies about Russian ballistic missiles. TASR ↗ According to the Guardian, Russia fired 39 ballistic missiles and 120 attack drones at Kyiv and Kharkiv on Tuesday evening, leaving at least 600,000 people without power. The Guardian ↗

What Warsaw writes: a customer who has no say over the service

Sikorski wrote to Musk on X: "Hey, @elonmusk, big man, are you playing politics with your products again? As your European customers, we are watching you." TVN24 ↗ He had already used the ironic address "big man" in January, when he urged Musk to prevent the Russian army from using Starlink to attack Ukrainian cities. Musk called him a "drooling imbecile" at the time. SITA ↗ Novinky.cz ↗

In August, SpaceX removed Poland from Starlink's European roaming zone without explanation. Sikorski reminded Musk at the time that Poland pays him roughly 50 million dollars a year for the services for Ukraine, and Warsaw called the move discrimination against Polish users. Onet ↗ Forum24 ↗

Poland is also the country through which part of Starlink's connection to Ukraine runs. A fire broke out in September at the ground station in the village of Wola Krobowska, which, according to Digitalization Minister Krzysztof Gawkowski, ensures the internet connection to Ukraine. Warsaw considers the fire sabotage. The station's operation did not stop. Prime Minister Donald Tusk announced on Monday that two Turkish nationals had been detained in Germany in connection with it, and two more people were later detained. Aktuality.sk ↗

What the Polish perspective adds

Slovak and Czech news coverage of the restriction focuses on Kyiv and Washington. In today's Slovak and Czech articles on Starlink that we reviewed, Sikorski's reaction and Poland's funding of the service did not appear. Poland's TVN24, however, also recalls that at the end of July media reported on Zelenskyy's request for Trump to allow him to use Starlink to strike targets in Russia, which was not granted. TVN24 ↗ Sikorski's phrase "as your European customers" names what Warsaw is getting at: a European state pays for a service that is crucial for the Ukrainian army, yet the conditions of that service are decided by a private American company.

Limits of this perspective

Sikorski's message is a political statement by a minister, not proof, and the claim about 50 million dollars a year is his figure, not an independently verified number. The link between the outage and Washington's policy currently rests only on the words of Ukrainian advisors and activists, and Sternenko himself speaks only of probability. No one has yet publicly offered a technical explanation, but no one has ruled it out either.

What hotinfo is monitoring

*Illustrative photo: a soldier of Ukraine's Support Forces installs a Starlink terminal. Author: Command of the Support Forces of Ukraine, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0.*