T
he owner of SpaceX, Elon Musk, has again placed himself in between Kyiv and access to its tool to fight—Starlink satellite communications system. As The Atlantic reports, Musk refused to provide Ukrainians with access to their own satellite internet system in order to be able to carry out strikes on deep areas of Russian territory after Volodymyr Zelensky directly raised this issue with US President Donald Trump.
This case became the second in the course of this war in which Musk limited the possibilities that Ukraine could achieve using the Starlink network he had provided.
This time Ukraine requested permission to use the Starlink system to guide strikes on Russian missile batteries that were constantly firing at Ukraine, including the capital city, Kyiv.
Due to depletion of Patriot interceptors in other areas, including confrontation with Iran, the country was trying to find other ways to attack missiles in order to stop their flights instead of interceptions later on.
In words of Denys Shtilerman, co-founder of Ukrainian defense company Fire Point, Ukraine intends to shoot down rockets from the air before they fly. Now, Starlink allows the country to perform strikes inside its territories at the battlefronts.
If this capability were extended to Russian territories, it could give an opportunity to expand the strike radius to 500 kilometers and, thus, allow Ukraine to bomb western parts of Russian territory and even some regions of Siberia.
However, the issue quickly moved beyond purely technical aspects. During a White House meeting of July 28, Zelensky asked Trump to facilitate talks between himself and Musk concerning this issue. And Trump, by all accounts, neither gave nor refused a commitment.
This indecisiveness leaves Kyiv with no clear diplomatic option to sway Musk, who has the right to personally decide how his privately owned Starlink operates.
As the presidential route bore no fruit, Ukraine decided to go through unofficial channels of communication. Mykhailo Fedorov, a Ukraine defense minister fired recently and long-term negotiator on Starlink-related issues, continued reaching out personally.
According to sources close to Fedorov, there has been no change in Musk's stance as of early August. The billionaire insists that now it is time for Ukraine to accept some compromises to end the conflict rather than to aggravate it with military actions.
Indeed, public statements of Elon Musk reflect his private position perfectly well. As reported, during the interview with The Economist that took place in mid-July, he claimed that Russia will not leave the occupied territories in Ukraine and that peace will be established only through concessions to the aggressor and not through continuation of armed confrontation.
These convictions, coupled with a longtime concern that he would be seen as complicit in the extension of the war, appear to be reasons why Musk decides to deny Ukraine a right to use his system for attacks against Russia.
However, it is not the first such decision by Elon Musk. Once before, he switched off Starlink in order to block a potential Ukrainian attack against Russia, fearing that his involvement in it would make him look like an accomplice to "a major act of war". Indeed, as mentioned, Fedorov arranged previous agreement between Kyiv and Musk to avoid Starlink usage by Russian forces on battlefields.
Refusal by Musk did not come out of blue for the Ukrainian state. First of all, recently, yet another disappointment happened to Ukraine in the sphere of its foreign policy: Matthew Whitaker, Ambassador to NATO, recently revealed that America would not allow production of Patriot interceptor missiles on its territory, thus contradicting an earlier promise provided by the Trump administration to Ukraine at the NATO summit that was held in July. Moreover, Trump did not agree at the very meeting when Zelensky brought up the Starlink problem to send some extra Patriots before winter.
Combining both, one gets that Ukraine starts experiencing troubles from two sides now—Russian and US. Indeed, Ukraine's plans on two types of arms, which are deemed most needed by now by it, namely the ability to establish a layered air defense as well as striking Russia's ground forces precisely and efficiently in deep territories, are obstructed by Russia in the first place, as well as the mentioned representatives and American-linked personalities.
Representatives of the Russian Federation started making a public ridicule of the situation with Musk; in particular Foreign Minister spokeswoman Maria Zakharova stated a few weeks ago that if Musk were really concerned about saving lives, he had to stop Starlink operations in Ukraine fully, not partially.
