Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said he feels personally betrayed by Donald Trump after it emerged that Ukraine’s military has had its access to Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite squeezed, raising doubts about long-term US support for Kyiv. The Ukrainian president, on a visit to London, accused Trump of picking the other side after more than four years of war, risking a breakdown in relations already strained by the US agreeing to buy diesel from Moscow. Ahead of a meeting with prime minister Andy Burnham in Downing St, Zelenskyy appeared in a TV interview where he was asked whether the sudden restriction of Starlink was deliberate and if he felt betrayed by Trump.
That effectively rendered most of the drones used by Ukraine to strike behind the frontlines inoperable – and, it later emerged, affected the most effective air defence system to stop Russian jet-powered attack drones bombing Kyiv. Because it was 1am at night, Starlink was blocked by SpaceX and the United States,” Zelenskyy said in an interview with Piers Morgan. For years, the US has provided Ukraine with intelligence when strikes were about to take place.
Trump denied that his administration has cut intelligence sharing on Tuesday, but Zelenskyy said in an interview with US broadcaster NPR aired on Wednesday that military advisers had received threats from the US that intelligence sharing could be limited in the future. The US president has demanded that Ukraine stop striking Russian oil refineries, which he has blamed for the high cost of diesel, although most analysts say that the closure of the strait of Hormuz after the US-Israel attack on Iran has had a far larger impact on global energy prices. The two leaders fell out in the spring of 2025 during a disastrous visit by Zelenskyy to the Oval Office, where the US president said: “You don’t have the cards” to win the war.
The row was followed by a brief pause in intelligence sharing and a desperate scramble by European allies to calm the row. Burnham met Zelenskyy in Downing Street on Wednesday, hours after he promised MPs that the Ukrainian president “would not leave empty handed” and that he had tasked officials with drawing up further sanctions and options for speeding up military aid. As the pair met at Number 10, he promised that Britain’s support for Ukraine would remain constant.
We are behind you and that will not change,” he said. Zelenskyy had met with King Charles in Buckingham Palace earlier on Wednesday. In brief remarks to reporters, Zelenskyy said he hoped to raise access to Starlink and intelligence sharing in his meeting with the British prime minister.
Burnham pledged that he will accelerate the supply of British lightweight multi-role missiles to Ukraine, which the country uses to counter Russian drone strikes and said they were looking for “all possible avenues” of further support. The prime minister also said he was prepared to discuss the ceasefire proposed by Trump on attacks on energy infrastructure but acknowledged that Moscow had not abided by it. Earlier Burnham told MPs at PMQs that he wanted to be “careful” about potential criticism of Trump that might risk exacerbating tensions, saying he was “laying the ground” for a reconciliation: “I will listen to President Zelenskyy carefully, but he won’t be going away from Britain today empty-handed.” The meeting, which lasted just over an hour, began as Burnham greeted Zelenskyy with a hug on Downing Street, before the pair walked to the door of No 10 and posed for photographs, flanked by Irish guards in full ceremonial uniform.
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