At the Pentagon on Thursday, US defence secretary Pete Hegseth told his British counterpart, Wes Streeting, that Ukraine again had access to Starlink. Streeting left the meeting reassured on that point, and not on others. He was not told why the service had stopped. He did not want to guess.

A day earlier in London, Volodymyr Zelensky had said Donald Trump had betrayed his country by limiting the use of Starlink terminals, which the army depends on. Kyiv said SpaceX had restricted the service on Wednesday and that attack and air-defence drone missions had suffered. Elon Musk replied that the US government controlled the speeds. Asked whether the Pentagon had cut capability to stop strikes on Russian energy sites, Streeting said that was not his understanding: they had not really gone into why the interruption happened. They had noted it was restored, and welcomed that.

After the meeting, on the BBC, Streeting repeated: it is not yet clear, to London, what occurred. Hegseth had told him directly that the service was back. He tied the moment to the importance of the American contribution on intelligence sharing. This was not the first falling-out between Washington and Kyiv, he added. To Hegseth he had quoted St Francis of Assisi: where there is discord, may we bring harmony. That, he said, is the British approach. “I’m here to solve problems. The UK has been Ukraine’s number one ally. We will continue to play that role.”

It is his first visit to Washington as defence secretary. It comes on already strained ground: Trump has eased sanctions on Russian diesel, and Zelensky called the move a gift to Putin. Before the Pentagon, Streeting argued at CSIS and RUSI for continued American support. On Fox he told Martha MacCallum that, after recent days, it mattered to move forward “in a collective spirit”, and that London sometimes sees its job as bringing friends back together.

Starlink is not a civilian gadget at the front. Ukraine uses it to keep drones and air defences networked. A day of throttled speed is felt. Restoration, announced through an ally, still leaves open who gave the order. Streeting declined to fill that gap.

Hegseth also thanked him for British communications about recent threats to US forces in the UK, including a suspected Iran-linked plot and a security incident at RAF Fairford. That is another file. On Starlink, what remains from Thursday is a verbal assurance: the service is back. For London, the cause still is not.

Image: David B. Gleason, the Pentagon, 12 January 2008, CC BY-SA 2.0, Wikimedia Commons. The photograph shows the building, not the 15 October 2026 meeting.

Sources consulted: Hegseth tells UK counterpart that Ukraine’s access to Starlink restored — The Irish Times; Streeting ‘reassured’ by US defence secretary Hegseth that Ukraine’s access to Starlink restored — The Independent; UK's Streeting says he and Hegseth welcomed Starlink restoration in Ukraine — Reuters.