The bombshell claims land at a vital time within the U.S. election marketing campaign, however the businessman’s affect extends far past politics, by way of his social community platform X and his tech firm SpaceX, by means of which he has megabucks authorities contracts and high-level safety clearance to categorized U.S. info.
His Starlink satellite tv for pc web service highlights a key facet of Musk’s affect: The billionaire gave Ukraine free entry to his system after Putin launched his full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
It was hailed as an necessary software in Ukraine’s capability to struggle again in opposition to Russian forces, however relations between Musk and Ukrainian authorities cooled over the course of the warfare, and Musk stopped funding the terminals for Ukraine and even restricted its army’s use of Starlink to regulate drones.
In October 2022, Musk additionally started tweeting a collection of Kremlin speaking factors in regards to the warfare, which he introduced as a plan for peace, however triggered main pushback from prime officers in Kyiv, even from President Volodymyr Zelenskyy himself.
In early 2024, Ukrainian army intelligence stories stated that Musk’s satellite tv for pc service was being utilized by the Russian military on the Ukrainian entrance.
According to Putin’s spokesperson Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin’s solely communication with Musk was a telephone name wherein he and Putin mentioned “area, in addition to present and future applied sciences.”
Knowledge of Musk’s Kremlin contacts seems to be a intently held secret within the U.S. administration, based on The Wall Street Journal, and a number of other White House officers stated they had been unaware of them.
Musk has not but responded to the stories, and he didn’t reply to The Wall Street Journal’s requests for remark.