US Threatens to Cut Starlink Access in Ukraine If No Rare Earth Minerals Deal Signed

The US has threatened to cut off Ukraine’s access to Starlink – the global satellite network that has proven essential on the battlefield – if Kyiv does not accept the White House’s deal to exchange its rare earth minerals for continued security guarantees, according to anonymous sources.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has so far rejected demands from US President Donald Trump‘s team to sign over its mineral wealth in exchange for security, but Zelensky said on Friday that the two countries were continuing to work on an agreement and would likely announce a deal soon. 

Ukraine’s access to Starlink – owned by Trump’s special adviser and tech billionaire Elon Musk through his company SpaceX – was put on the table during discussions between American and Ukrainian officials after Zelensky turned down an initial deal proposed by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on his visit to Kyiv last week, three anonymous sources told Reuters. 

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Starlink has been critical to the Ukrainian military’s operations ever since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of the country almost exactly three years ago today and Kremlin forces began targeting energy and communication infrastructure in an effort to cripple the country and its resistance to the invasion. 

One source told Reuters that the threat was brought up again in Thursday’s meeting between Zelensky and Keith Kellogg, the US special envoy to Ukraine, where the stakes were made clear.

Ukrainian officials were reportedly told that they would face the imminent shutoff of Starlink services if they did not agree to one of the US-brokered deals on Ukraine’s rare earth mineral resources. 

“Ukraine runs on Starlink. They consider it their North Star,” the source told Reuters. “Losing Starlink... would be a massive blow.”

Musk was once seen as a savior in Ukraine for quickly sending thousands of Starlink terminals to the besieged country in February 2022 to resist Russia’s onslaught, but his relationship with Kyiv had started to shift by the autumn of the same year.

In Oct. 2022, Musk said his company could no longer cover the cost of maintaining the Starlink network in Ukraine and that he would need about $400 million from the Pentagon over the next year to continue providing service.

Reports surfaced in Feb. 2023 that Musk directly intervened during the same period to prevent a Ukrainian counterattack on Crimea that he disagreed with. 

Starlink was “never never meant to be weaponized,” Gwynne Shotwell, SpaceX’s president and chief operating officer, said at the time per Reuters. “However, Ukrainians have leveraged it in ways that were unintentional and not part of any agreement,” she said.