According to US press reports, billionaire Elon Musk maintains regular contacts with the Kremlin and spoke personally with Vladimir Putin in the fall of 2022.
According to the magazine “The New Yorker”, citing former deputy chief of the Pentagon Colin Kahl, this happened after Musk decided to equip the Ukrainian military with Starlink terminals for satellite communications.
Kiev decided to turn to SpaceX, a company owned by Musk, when the Kremlin, in addition to military intervention, began carrying out cyber-attacks on Ukraine’s digital infrastructure. Kiev authorities planned to create a network of terminals that would be difficult for Russia to completely destroy.
Three sources involved in the delivery of Starlink systems to Ukraine told reporters that at first no one realized how much Musk was personally interested in the process.
However, already in the fall of 2022, the businessman began to express concern about the use of Starlinks in the war, and also said that he would not be able to continuously fund supplies from his own pocket. Soon after, the Ukrainian military began to complain of intermittent network failures on the front lines.
Pentagon, Putin and Starlink
As the case caused a stir in the Pentagon, Kahl, the undersecretary of defense at the time, called Musk and tried to convince him not to cut off the Ukrainians’ access to the internet. The businessman did not immediately agree to the terms of the US authorities.
“I think he was annoyed that Starlink is increasingly associated in Russia with supporting the activities of the Ukrainian military,” Kahl told the paper.
According to the publication, Musk is said to have said that he “had a good conversation with Putin”. Reed Hoffman, who worked with Musk at PayPal, believes the billionaire “fully bought what the Russian president sold to him,” telling the Aspen conference that “Putin wants peace.”
In October, Musk denied talking to Putin. In a Twitter post dubbed X, the billionaire said he had spoken to the Russian president only once, about 18 months earlier, about space.
Musk’s plan to end the war in Ukraine
New reports from The New Yorker have reignited the controversy that erupted after Musk published a “peace plan.” It was appreciated by the Kremlin and criticized by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
Musk then proposed a new UN-supervised referendum in eastern Ukraine, leaving Crimea to Russia and giving Ukraine “neutral status”. In another article, he argued that Crimea is as important to Russia as Hawaii is to the United States.
Source: Do Rzeczy
Roy Brown is a renowned economist and author at The Nation View. He has a deep understanding of the global economy and its intricacies. He writes about a wide range of economic topics, including monetary policy, fiscal policy, international trade, and labor markets.
