By Jon DuffyContributing writer
Oct. 21, 2026 3 AM PT
Last week, Ukrainian forces defending their country from Russia’s invasion suddenly found their ability to coordinate operations disrupted. Satellite communications used to control Ukrainian interceptor drones defending cities against Russian attacks had been restricted. Ukrainian military personnel reported failed missions and lost drones. According to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, the restrictions allowed some Russian attack drones to evade interception.
Starshield, the military satellite communications service developed by SpaceX, has been provided to Ukraine under U.S. government control since late 2024. Reuters has reported that the order to restrict its capabilities that support Ukraine came from the White House. President Trump denies ordering the restrictions. Zelensky says Ukrainian tests found that the limitations applied inside Ukraine but not in European Union territory, contradicting SpaceX’s explanation that the disruption was merely a technical problem.
There is an enormous difference between the United States declining to provide additional military assistance to a country fighting for its survival and deliberately interfering with its ability to defend itself.
The disruption fits a broader pattern of Trump administration decisions that have constrained Ukraine while offering concessions to Russia. Earlier this month, American officials warned Ukraine to stop attacking Russian oil refineries or risk losing access to critical U.S. weapons and intelligence. Those strikes have damaged Russia’s ability to sustain its war.
Just weeks after signing bipartisan legislation intended to tighten U.S. sanctions on Russia, Trump reached an agreement with Russian President Vladimir Putin to ease restrictions on Russian diesel exports. Then, on Friday, Trump waived major provisions of the same new sanctions law, declaring that doing so served the national interest. The administration is also pressing European allies to resume buying Russian natural gas as part of a prospective peace agreement.
Putin’s envoy welcomed the sanctions relief, even as the Russian president reaffirmed his territorial ambitions and his forces continued attacking Ukrainian cities and power facilities.
Since returning to office, Trump has shown open hostility to Zelensky, questioning his legitimacy as president and publicly suggesting Ukraine should replace him. Trump has repeatedly portrayed the leader of the invaded country, rather than the invading dictator, as the obstacle to peace.
Putin has spent more than two decades consolidating authoritarian rule and presiding over elections that offer Russians no meaningful opportunity to remove him from power. His opponents have been imprisoned, driven into exile or killed. In 2022, Putin launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine intending to subjugate an independent nation. Russian forces have since destroyed Ukrainian cities, massacred civilians and forcibly deported children.
The people of Ukraine are fighting to keep Putin’s regime from deciding their future. Ukraine is not a perfect democracy, and Zelensky is not beyond criticism. But the right to choose their own government belongs to Ukrainians, not to the Russian president.
Ukrainians are doing the fighting themselves, paying for their independence with their own lives. They are not asking American soldiers to fight their war. They are asking for the means to defend their country.
Americans can reasonably disagree about how much assistance we should provide Ukraine and what a negotiated settlement might look like. But repeatedly constraining Ukraine while relieving pressure on Russia is something altogether different.
For 250 years, Americans have insisted that people have the right to govern themselves rather than submit to a distant ruler. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine challenges that principle and the prohibition against territorial conquest that the U.S. helped make central to the international order after World War II.
There is also a compelling American strategic interest in Ukraine’s survival. For more than four years, Ukrainian forces have inflicted enormous losses on Russia’s military without American troops entering the fight. Supporting that resistance has weakened a major American adversary while helping defend the security of our European allies. In Ukraine, our national interests and professed principles point in the same direction.
Russia understands that calculation. According to U.S. intelligence reporting, Russia has provided Iran with information useful for targeting American forces in a war Trump himself launched. Moscow is helping Tehran attack and degrade U.S. military power without risking Russian troops in a direct confrontation. It is the same strategic logic that makes American assistance to Ukraine so valuable: weaken an adversary by helping another country fight it. Yet Trump has publicly dismissed reports of Russian assistance while offering Moscow economic relief.
Trump says he doesn’t want to drive Russia “away from the bargaining table.” Yet his concessions to Moscow have done little to bring the war to an end. These are deliberate choices he is making, not unavoidable compromises forced upon him by circumstances.
Putin is trying to conquer a sovereign nation and impose his will on its people. Ukrainians have spent more than four years fighting to prevent him from succeeding.
It is incomprehensible why the president of the United States would make Putin’s task easier. And it is indefensible that he keeps doing it.
Jon Duffy is a retired naval officer. He writes about leadership and democracy.
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Ideas expressed in the pieceThe article argues that restricting Ukraine’s access to Starshield goes beyond withholding additional aid: it interferes with Ukraine’s ability to defend itself. It places the disruption within a wider pattern of pressure on Kyiv and relief for Moscow, including limits on Ukrainian strikes and the easing of sanctions.It contends that Ukrainians—not Russia—should decide Ukraine’s political future. While acknowledging that Ukraine’s democracy is imperfect and its president can be criticized, the piece argues that those shortcomings do not give Moscow a right to dictate the country’s leadership.The column makes both a principled and strategic case for supporting Ukraine: resisting territorial conquest accords with the U.S. commitment to self-government, while helping Ukraine impose costs on Russia can serve U.S. and European security interests.It concludes that the administration’s concessions have not demonstrably ended the war and that repeatedly constraining Ukraine while easing pressure on Russia is a deliberate choice, not an unavoidable compromise.Different views on the topicTrump says he did not order the Starlink-related restrictions and denies that the United States imposed a limit on Ukraine’s access. Reuters, citing U.S. and Western officials, reported that the instruction to restrict Starshield came from inside the White House, while a senior U.S. official said the president had not requested it.[1][2]Trump has defended easing sanctions as a way to keep Russia engaged in peace negotiations, saying he does not want to drive Moscow away from the bargaining table. Secretary of State Marco Rubio described the sanctions waiver as a period to assess potential economic effects, while Energy Secretary Chris Wright characterized the diesel deal as an incentive for peace rather than an economic lifeline for Russia.[3][5]The administration has also argued that halting Ukrainian attacks on Russian refineries could help ease fuel prices and support an energy ceasefire. Trump has blamed those strikes for raising global oil prices; however, Reuters reported that analysts see the Iran war and disruptions to energy supplies as the main drivers of the energy-price surge.[4][6]