Fake Marco Rubio audio on Starlink, Ukraine spreads online

"US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said he will meet with Elon Musk in the coming days to convince him to turn off Starlink in Ukraine," says a March 4, 2025 post on X from an account soliciting money, ostensibly for Ukraine.

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Screenshot from X taken March 10, 2025

The video begins with CNN anchor Kaitlan Collins asking Rubio what he wanted to see Volodymyr Zelensky apologize for following a tense February 28 White House meeting between the Ukrainian leader and Trump.

"Well, apologize for turning this thing into the fiasco for him that it became," Washington's top diplomat says in response.

The clip then cuts to footage of the Trump-Zelensky Oval Office meeting, while what sounds like Rubio's voice continues speaking.

"In the next few days, I will see Elon Musk, and I swear I will convince him to cut off the Ukrainian Army from Starlink," the voice says. "Then Zelensky will see how much he actually depends on us."

The clip spread across X -- and in languages including French and Polish -- as the US suspended military aid and intelligence sharing with Ukraine after the contentious meeting in Washington, at which Rubio was present. 

The satellite communications network is operated by SpaceX, a company controlled by Musk, who is heading Trump's efforts to slash government spending.

Starlink has been deployed in Ukraine since shortly after the country was invaded by Russia in February 2022. Cuts to the service has been the subject of threats from Musk in the past.

Ukrainian Defence Minister Rustem Umerov had told a February 23, 2025 press conference in Kyiv that his country was exploring alternatives to provide communications on the battlefield. 

But on March 9, Musk said on X that he would not remove the critical satellite services from Ukraine.

"To be extremely clear, no matter how much I disagree with the Ukraine policy, Starlink will never turn off its terminals," Musk wrote, after an online clash with the Polish foreign minister Radoslaw Sikorski (archived here).

Rubio also chimed in to the back-and-forth, saying: "No one has made any threats about cutting Ukraine off from Starlink" (archived here).

The video purporting to show him issuing such a threat on CNN is fabricated.

"This is a completely manipulated video, and did not air," CNN spokesperson Emily Kuhn told AFP in a March 7 email.

Fabricated audio

The State Department referred AFP to the agency's online transcript of Rubio's interview on the broadcast network, which took place February 28 (archived here).

Both the transcript and footage of the interview show Rubio answered Collins differently when asked about the need for an apology.

"Well, apologize for turning this thing into the fiasco for him that it became," he said. "There was no need for him to go in there and become antagonistic... (the war) needs to come to an end. We are trying to bring it to an end. The way you bring it to an end is you get Russia to the table to talk, and he understands that."

Nowhere in the conversation did the secretary of state mention Starlink.

Ukraine's Center for Countering Disinformation also said on X that the viral online video of Rubio is fake (archived here).

Siwei Lyu, director of the University at Buffalo's Media Forensic Lab, analyzed the video's audio using algorithms designed to detect artificial intelligence and said they determined it is "very likely AI-generated" (archived here).

One indicator the audio was created using AI is that, as the frame switched from Rubio speaking to voiced-over footage of the Trump-Zelensky Oval Office meeting, the background noise and echo of Rubio's microphone disappeared.

"There is no background noise or echo," Lyu said. "Such clean sound is a feature we have observed from many AI-generated audios."

AFP has debunked other misinformation about the Ukraine war here.