The bombshell claims land at a vital time within the U.S. election marketing campaign, however the businessman’s affect extends far past politics, through 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 labeled 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 essential software in Ukraine’s potential to combat again towards Russian forces, however relations between Musk and Ukrainian authorities cooled over the course of the battle, and Musk stopped funding the terminals for Ukraine and even restricted its army’s use of Starlink to manage drones.
In October 2022, Musk additionally started tweeting a collection of Kremlin speaking factors concerning the battle, which he offered as a plan for peace, however triggered main pushback from high officers in Kyiv, even from President Volodymyr Zelenskyy himself.
In early 2024, Ukrainian army intelligence experiences stated that Musk’s satellite tv for pc service was being utilized by the Russian military on the Ukrainian entrance.
Based on 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.”
Data of Musk’s Kremlin contacts seems to be a carefully held secret within the U.S. administration, based on The Wall Avenue Journal, and a number of other White Home officers stated they have been unaware of them.
Musk has not but responded to the experiences, and he didn’t reply to The Wall Avenue Journal’s requests for remark.