Bessent: Zelensky ‘should be careful’ with ‘reckless’ comments that US slowed down Starlink

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Sunday that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky “should be careful” with “reckless” comments about the U.S. slowing down Starlink.

“President Trump and Secretary [of State Marco] Rubio have categorically said that no one in the Trump administration did that. And I think it is very reckless for President Zelensky to make such a charge,” Bessent said on NBC News’s “Meet the Press.”

“How did it get slowed down? How are these disruptions caused? Because President Zelensky also said there was a break in intel sharing as well. Why did that happen?” NBC News’s Kristen Welker pressed Bessent.

“Again, I don’t know anything about that, but we’ve been very clear. And, you know, President Zelensky should be very careful about making statements like this that aren’t true,” Bessent responded.

In an interview with Welker that aired right before her conversation with Bessent, Zelensky told the NBC News anchor that “the message came from” the American government to slow Starlink for Ukraine.

“I don’t know from whom, what cabinet and etcetera. And I think it doesn’t work either way. But I don’t know, really. But we think — it’s not my opinion. It’s opinion of our generals, of our government, and of course my also opinion, the same, that it was a message from American government to limit the speed,” Zelensky said.

On Friday, Trump said that neither he nor SpaceX founder Elon Musk caused an outage of Starlink earlier last week.

“I didn’t do that. No, we didn’t do that at all. In fact, I don’t even think it was slowed down from what I understood. Because I just checked this morning,” Trump told reporters Friday.

“I heard about it from the news, the media. And we didn’t slow it down at all. And I think it’s probably functioning, from what I understand,” he continued.

Ukraine reported the outage last Wednesday, with the country claiming its military lost access to the military version of Starlink, which the Eastern European country uses for vital communications.

Starlink services were restricted specifically for objects that travel more than 100 mph, impacting Ukrainian drones, airplanes and helicopters, according to a source familiar with the matter. Some Ukrainian officials suggested the decision to limit its Starlink access may have come from Washington.