A top Ukrainian official called out SpaceX owner Elon Musk after a new biography revealed details about how the company cut off Starlink satellite internet services to Ukrainian submarine drones last year, just as they were launching an attack on a Russian fleet based in Crimea. Musk defended his decision overnight, saying he did not want SpaceX to be “explicitly complicit in a major act of war and conflict escalation.”
Here’s the latest on the war and its impact across the globe.
Musk told engineers to turn off Starlink coverage near the Crimean coast after learning about the planned submarine drone attack in the fall of 2022, according to a new biography of Musk, which was excerpted in a Washington Post opinion article. As a result, it said, “when the Ukrainian drone subs got near the Russian fleet in Sevastopol, they lost connectivity and washed ashore harmlessly.” Ukrainian and American officials scrambled to get service restored, according to the biography, appealing to Musk directly. Musk, who at one point threatened to stop funding the satellite service altogether, eventually agreed.
Musk said the drone attack had intended “to sink most of the Russian fleet at anchor” and that he had received an “emergency request” from Ukrainian authorities to “activate Starlink all the way to Sevastopol.” He said if he had agreed to the request, his company would have been “complicit in a major act of war.” However, Zelensky adviser Mykhailo Podolyak claimed Musk’s interference led to the deaths of civilians, calling them “the price of a cocktail of ignorance and big ego.” Russia has illegally occupied Crimea since 2014.
Biden and other world leaders are arriving in New Delhi for the Group of 20 economic summit, with the war in Ukraine among issues taking center stage. The summit gets underway Saturday. Russian President Vladimir Putin will not be attending; Russia’s defense minister is expected to take his place. Charles Michel, president of the European Council, wrote on social media that the war in Ukraine would be a key issue.
Ukraine has lambasted Russian elections in occupied areas as a “sham.” Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry said Friday that elections being staged by Russia are “worthless” and have no legal standing, Reuters reported. Moscow is holding regional elections in four Ukrainian areas that it does not fully control — Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson. The United States, Europe and others have also condemned the move.
A Pentagon official defended a U.S. decision to supply Ukraine with depleted uranium munitions that are capable of piercing armor, pushing back on claims from the Russian Embassy in Washington that such weapons cause cancer. “Even the [International Atomic Energy Agency] has stated unequivocally that there is no proven link between D.U. exposure and increases in cancers or significant health or environmental impacts,” Sabrina Singh, the Pentagon’s deputy press secretary, said at a Thursday news briefing.
As many as 90 percent of Ukrainian prisoners of war held by Russia have faced torture, rape, threats of sexual violence or other ill treatment, according to accusations leveled by Ukraine’s prosecutor general, Andriy Kostin, during a meeting with the U.N. special rapporteur on torture.
Zelensky introduced his new defense minister, Rustem Umerov. In his nightly address, Zelensky described Umerov, a Crimean Tatar, as a “strong person” who “can reboot the work of the Ministry of Defense.” His appointment follows the resignation of Oleksii Reznikov as defense minister, amid a wide-ranging crackdown on allegations of graft in the ministry as Ukraine seeks to project to its Western backers a hard-line stance on the issue.
Russian forces have largely been holding their positions in Ukraine’s counteroffensive, analysts say. They have adapted and are “using their experience of this war” to fight Ukrainian forces to a grinding standstill, Ian Matveev, a Russian military analyst for the Anti-Corruption Foundation, told The Post. Still, Ukraine appears to be making some progress, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said in a speech to the European Parliament, noting that there is “difficult fighting,” but that the counteroffensive is “gradually gaining ground.” In his nightly address, Zelensky thanked brigades in the east and south for the “very, very effective destruction of the occupiers.”
Secretary of State Antony Blinken praised the “extraordinary resilience of the Ukrainian people” on Thursday while visiting a school where Russian forces had held more than 100 Ukrainians hostage. Before leaving Ukraine, where he pledged more than $1 billion in additional U.S. aid, Blinken also visited a border guard facility in the Kyiv region and a field that is being cleared of unexploded Russian ordnance.
Russia has “no place” at next year’s Paris Olympics at a time “when it has committed war crimes and deported children,” French President Emmanuel Macron told L’Equipe newspaper, according to the Associated Press.
Vice President Harris said it would be a “huge mistake” for North Korea to provide military support to Russia in an interview with CBS News. Russian President Vladimir Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un are expected to meet in Russia this month to discuss possible weapons deals.
Prigozhin confidant says fatal plane crash shows no one is safe: Maksim Shugalei, one of Wagner chief Yevgeniy Prigozhin’s trusted political influence peddlers, wrote on Telegram that the Aug. 23 plane crash, which killed Prigozhin and nine others on board, shows that no one is safe, “despite their merits, position, social status.”
“If we are talking about internal forces, this means only one thing to me,” he wrote. “In our country, no word given by anyone to anyone at any level can be trusted anymore.”
Western analysts believe Putin probably ordered Prigozhin’s death as retribution for the short-lived mutiny he led in June, Robyn Dixon and Francesca Ebel write.
Serhiy Morgunov contributed to this report.
