Is Musk Really Cooling on Ukraine — Or Is Putin Really Warming to Peace?

Mr. Hamlet, please call your office.

AP/Susan Walsh
Elon Musk AP/Susan Walsh

The decision by Elon Musk to pull the plug on financing for a satellite communications system that has been vital for Kyiv’s defenses, in concert with cryptic reports of Vladimir Putin’s purported openness to peace talks, raises more questions than answers as the war in Ukraine lurches toward its eighth month.

In a double-barreled tweet on Friday Mr. Musk complained about a Financial Times article that said Ukrainian forces have reported Starlink outages during their push against Russia. He also balked at the system’s cost and the idea that he should underwrite that burden himself.

Starlink is the much-hyped high-tech satellite-based broadband Internet system made by his SpaceX company. The 20,000 or so Starlink units that Mr. Musk donated to Ukraine’s military since the spring have been helping to outfox Russian forces on the communications front.

Mr. Musk’s contends that the FT article “falsely claims that Starlink terminals and service were paid for, when only a small percentage have been,” adding that “this operation has cost SpaceX $80 million and will exceed $100 million by end of year.” Adds he: “As for what’s happening on the battlefield, that’s classified.”

Now Mr. Musk says, according to CNN, that SpaceX cannot keep fronting the bill. The cable network reported that a letter SpaceX sent to the Pentagon last month read in part, “We are not in a position to further donate terminals to Ukraine, or fund the existing terminals for an indefinite period of time.”

About two month prior to that, the Ukrainian commanding general, Valerii Zaluzhniy, reportedly made a direct request to Mr. Musk for 8,000 additional Starlink terminals. There is little doubt that system outages have had a deleterious effect on the frontlines, given that over time Starlink has become a significant communications tool for Ukraine’s various battle units.

The terminals even “help fly drones and send back video to correct artillery fire,” the CNN report said. A source, though, told the network that now “when Ukraine liberates an area” a request must be made first for the relevant Starlink services to be switched on. In the meantime, Ukraine says around 500 terminals are destroyed in fighting each month, hence the urgency on supply issues. 

The larger question is whether Elon Musk has officially switched off his commitment to Ukraine. For the brouhaha over system costs comes on the heels of a firestorm over a series of tweets in which Mr. Musk floated the suggestion for a peace deal that was widely seen as parroting Russian positions.

His tweets suggested granting Moscow territorial concessions considered anathema by Kyiv. Mr. Musk even admitted to having had a conversation with President Putin, though he says they talked about “space” and the timing of the call (or calls) remains unclear.

There may be a degree of duplicity to Mr. Musk’s complaint, however, because the terminals given to Ukraine to date have actually received funding from the American government as well as the governments of Britain and Poland.

The three countries have been the most committed to Ukraine’s cause. It is possible that Mr. Musk simply wants an injection of more cash from Washington. It is also plausible — and this is the part more troubling for Ukrainians — that he has soured on navigating the seemingly endless stream of Russia-Ukraine chaos. 

A top advisor to President Zelensky, Mykhailo Podolyak, said via Twitter on Friday, “Let’s be honest. Like it or not, Elon Musk helped us survive the most critical moments of war. Business has the right to its own strategies.” He added, “Ukraine will find a solution to keep #Starlink working. We expect that the company will provide stable connection till the end of negotiations.”

Mr. Musk is hardly the only figure who senses diminishing returns in Ukraine. Some have suggested that Mr. Putin wants out, but  according to a new report in Meduza, Moscow’s quiet push for a return to negotiations is little more than playing for time.

The news site, which is banned in Russia, reports that behind closed doors the Kremlin has been lobbying Turkey and Western leaders to return to the negotiations that stalled last spring. Kremlin sources reportedly said they want not a peace treaty but a temporary ceasefire.

That points to Russia’s incipient retreat from the occupied section of Ukraine’s Kherson region as little more than a ploy ahead of a “new full-scale offensive” that Russian sources told Meduza “might start in February or March 2023.”

Meanwhile, at a news conference on Friday in Kazakhstan, Mr. Putin said, “The introduction of troops into a direct confrontation with the Russian army is a very dangerous step that could lead to a global catastrophe.”

The Russ leader also made it a point to say that he has no plans for a further mobilization of troops, and that the current one will end in about two weeks. That might be another ruse, and the Russian dangled no fresh nuclear taunts, but could it be that he is simply upping the pressure for a new round of talks?

Mr. Podolyak, the advisor to Mr. Zelensky, isn’t buying any of it. He told Meduza, “What does a ceasefire give Ukraine, in the Russian scenario? A chance to fix a de facto new line of separation…. Can they really believe we’re going to agree to that?” 

Added Mr. Podolyak: “A clear operational pause for the brutally battered Russian units, so they can at least train a few hastily mobilized soldiers and send a new quantity of death-bound men to the battlefield? What would we want that for?”

It is easy enough for someone like Mr. Musk to bow out of this fraught back-and-forth between two vastly different European powers at war. For one thing, no one elected him. Yet as the Sun has previously reported, it may be up to President Biden to step in with a bit more swagger.

One place he might do that is at the G20 parley next month in Indonesia. Without such steps, and with or without Starlink functioning at full tilt, expect more Russian missiles to strike Ukrainian cities in the days and weeks to come.


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