U.S. special envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner are expected to meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky this week, as Kyiv reports that its access to Starshield satellite communications has been restricted for a second time.
The planned sit-down comes after the two envoys held talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow on Wednesday. "I think progress was made. I think it was made earlier today," Witkoff told CNN following that meeting. "People didn't think that we were going to restart trilateral. We've restarted it. We've set a new meeting."
Witkoff said the renewed diplomatic push is what President Trump wants to see, and he indicated that European allies would take part in the upcoming round of talks. "They're our partners, and it's important for them to be involved," he said.
Kushner, the president's son-in-law, characterized the conversations with Putin and other Russian officials as "very fulsome and detailed discussions on all the topics," adding that he believes they "will inform hopefully the next multilateral discussions," according to CNN.
The Moscow visit took place on the same day Zelensky said, in a post on the social platform X, that new restrictions were limiting the ability of Ukrainian interceptors powered by Starshield to stop Russian projectiles traveling faster than 100 mph. Starshield is the military version of SpaceX's Starlink service. Zelensky said the limits meant the interceptors could not reach sufficient speed to shoot down Russian jet-powered drones.
"This means more Russian strikes get through, and more of our people are killed by Russia. We are trying to get the details from the American side, but so far, we know very little," Zelensky wrote.
The reported slowdown follows similar Ukrainian Starshield outages in October that ignited a firestorm in Washington, where lawmakers accused the Trump administration of cozying up to Russia. The anger intensified at the time when Trump waived a bipartisan Russian sanctions package named after the late Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.).
Administration officials were quick to point the finger at tech billionaire Elon Musk of Tesla and SpaceX over the earlier slowdown. Musk initially denied the allegations but later accepted blame. He has not yet commented publicly on the latest outage.
Witkoff and Kushner are now headed to Dublin for their meeting with Zelensky after stops in Moscow and Abu Dhabi. Their trilateral talks with Ukrainian and Russian officials during that trip produced what was described as a large-scale exchange of prisoners of war, but the discussions did not result in a ceasefire or a peace deal.
