Ludmila Zhernovskaya23:45, 21.08.234 min.356

The billionaire himself denied this.

American billionaire and founder of SpaceX Elon Musk spoke to Putin on the phone shortly before the publication of his “peace plan” .This was written by investigative reporter Ronan Farrow in an article for The New Yorker magazine . According to him, at first, Musk unconditionally supported Ukraine, but at some point, communications at the front were interrupted, and SpaceX refused to finance Starlink satellite communications services in Ukraine.

Musk was also increasingly concerned that his technology was being used for military purposes. 

At a conference in Aspen, he publicly expressed his support for Putin. 

According to Reed Hoffman, who co-founded PayPal with Musk, he “bought on what Putin was selling – a hook, a fishing line and a sinker.

We have to negotiate. Putin wants peace – we have to negotiate peace with Putin,” Musk Hoffman recalls.

A week later, the billionaire posted on Twitter a “peace plan” that called for new referendums and the “surrender” of Crimea. 

“By that time, Musk’s sympathies seemed to have shown up on the battlefield. One day, Ukrainian troops advancing in the south of the country suddenly found themselves unable to communicate,” the reporter writes.”We were very close to the front line.

We crossed this border and Starlink stopped working. Communication was lost, units were isolated.

When you are on the offensive, especially for commanders, you need a constant stream of information from battalions.

Commanders had to go to the battlefield, to be in the radio coverage area, risking oneself,” said a communications soldier named Nikolai.

U.S. and Ukrainian officials told Farrow that they believed SpaceX had shut down communications using geosensors, cordoning off access areas. 

Former Under Secretary of Defense for Policy at the Pentagon, Colin Kahl, called Musk and asked him to give them a few weeks to work out the contract. “If you interrupt this case, the war will not end,” he told Musk.”

I concluded that he was starting to get nervous about Starlink’s involvement being increasingly viewed in Russia as an aid to Ukrainian military action, and he was looking for a way to assuage Russian concerns,” he said.

In addition, Musk told Pentagon officials that he personally spoke with Putin. 

According to another source, Musk made the same assertion weeks before the pro-Russian “plan” was released and said that his consultations with the Kremlin were regular. 

Musk himself denied having spoken to Putin about Ukraine.In a phone call to a senior Pentagon official, Musk said he looked at his laptop and could see “the whole war unfolding” through the Starlink activity map. 

It was about three minutes before he said, “I had a great conversation with Putin.”Musk told Kahl that the vivid illustration of how technology he developed for peaceful purposes is being used for warfare got him thinking. 

In the end, he agreed to give the Pentagon extra time, and after a public outcry, he retracted his threats. 

In early June, it became known that SpaceX signed an agreement with the Pentagon to service Starlink in Ukraine.

Musk’s position on the war

Recall that on October 3, Musk proposed his own version of  the “peace treaty” between Ukraine and Russia , according to which repeated “elections” should be held in the occupied territories under the control of the UN.According to him, Crimea is part of Russia, “as it has been since 1783,” and Ukraine should become a neutral state.

He recently wrote that “Russia would have won a war of attrition even if the losses were equal.”

(C)UNIAN 2023