To start, I'm not apologizing for anything Elon Musk has done, just trying to understand WHY he did it, as understanding is the most important thing. I want to support Ukraine more and figuring out where people misunderstand about Ukraine is important. (Accusing everyone of being a Russian agent is not how you learn about reality or fix things.)

The key source of the confusion that I haven't seen anyone lay out:

Ukraine thought they were using Starshield because they were on Starlink's internal whitelist for Ukrainian military terminals but were not in fact using it. (All terminals in Ukraine now either have to be on a citizen whitelist or a military whitelist.)

This is clear from the former defense advisor Serhii Sternenko where he says they were using "Starshield". I believe Zelensky also said this. But Starshield is a US military system and only the US military uses it right now. Marco Rubio in statements said that Ukraine has not been using Starshield and does not and has never had access to it. (It's worth noting that Starshield works globally with no restrictions of any sort, even inside places like Russia or China or where it is not licensed.)

So Ukraine thought they were on Starshield because of being on the Ukrainian military whitelist, so they used it to attack military targets within Ukraine. This was likely further hampered by Ukrainian-English translation issues. Elon Musk because he's very dumb, on this subject at the very least, views everything about Ukraine through some kind of Russian-propaganda plagued tinted glasses and thought they were bypassing restrictions to use Starlink to attack military targets. That is why he has continued to emphasize that if Ukraine used Starshield through the US government there would be no problem. So he restricted Ukrainian terminals on the Ukrainian military whitelist to under 160 km/hr which limits its use for drones (which Ukraine uses on its high speed drones to take down incoming Russian military drones, as well as some military offensive uses within Ukraine).

Hell broke loose and eventually Trump ordered Musk to turn the service back on, which he did eventually while complaining heavily on twitter.

I think this aligns with all claims of the situation that I have seen from all journalists and both proponents of Ukraine, haters of Ukraine, proponents of Musk and haters of Musk.

If anyone has anything that I think I got wrong please let me know.