{"id":2761,"date":"2023-08-22T14:01:41","date_gmt":"2023-08-22T14:01:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ukropposition.com\/?p=2761"},"modified":"2023-08-22T14:01:41","modified_gmt":"2023-08-22T14:01:41","slug":"elon-musk-pondered-pulling-starlink-satellite-internet-from-ukraine-because-he-feared-being-perceived-as-a-warmonger-in-russia-a-former-pentagon-official-has-said","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/ukrreality.com\/ru\/elon-musk-pondered-pulling-starlink-satellite-internet-from-ukraine-because-he-feared-being-perceived-as-a-warmonger-in-russia-a-former-pentagon-official-has-said\/","title":{"rendered":"Elon Musk pondered pulling Starlink satellite internet from Ukraine because he feared being perceived as a warmonger in Russia, a former Pentagon official has said."},"content":{"rendered":"<h3 class=\"e-headline u-heading-1\" data-test=\"headline\">Elon Musk considered pulling plug on Ukraine\u2019s Starlink access after \u2018great conversation with Putin\u2019<\/h3>\n<p>The 52 year-old South African-born billionaire expressed his concerns after Ukrainian forces reported network outages close to the\u00a0front lines separating them from their Russian occupiers.<\/p>\n<p>Colin Kahl, a US undersecretary of defence for policy until last month, was charged with brokering a deal to prevent\u00a0Mr Musk from turning the system off altogether.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf you turn this off, it doesn\u2019t end the war,\u201d Mr Kahl recalled telling the SpaceX chief, in an interview with The New Yorker.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMy inference was that he was getting nervous that Starlink\u2019s involvement was increasingly seen in Russia as enabling the Ukrainian war effort, and was looking for a way to placate Russian concerns,\u201d the former US official added.<\/p>\n<div class=\"articleBodyText section\">\n<div class=\"component article-body-text\" data-test=\"article-body-text\">\n<p>Last year, Mr Musk was accused of publishing a Kremlin-friendly peace proposal, suggesting Ukraine should mirror sovereignty referendums organised by Russia in regions it occupied. The outages were felt hardest in the Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, Luhansk and Donetsk regions. The four Ukrainian oblasts, parts of which were occupied by Russian forces, were all claimed as part of Russia after referendums staged by Kremlin proxies.<\/p>\n<p>Mr Musk told Pentagon officials during negotiations over Starlink that he had held personal talks with Russian president Vladimir Putin, the New Yorker reported. Satellite terminals donated by Mr Musk\u2019s SpaceX, as well as the US government and private donors, have become vital to Ukrainian military communications. The \u201cconstellation\u201d of satellites,\u00a0operated by Mr Musk\u2019s SpaceX firm, are used to coordinate drone and artillery strikes, stream live video from the battlefield and gather intelligence.<\/p>\n<p>Mr Musk boasted that he could see the \u201centire war unfolding\u201d through a map of Starlink activity. He told Mr Kahl that live information had made him hesitate over whether his satellite internet system was being used for peaceful means or to wage war.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis was, like, three minutes before he said, \u2018well, I had this great conversation with Putin\u2019,\u201d Mr Kahl said.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<figure class=\"article-body-image section\" data-test=\"article-body-image\" data-js=\"article-body-image\">\n<div class=\"article-body-image__container\">\n<div class=\"lazy-image article-body-image__source is-ready\" data-js=\"LazyImage\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Elon Musk considered pulling plug on Ukraine\u2019s Starlink access after \u2018great conversation with Putin\u2019 The 52 year-old South African-born billionaire expressed his concerns after Ukrainian forces<span class=\"excerpt-hellip\"> [\u2026]<\/span><\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2763,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,19,21],"tags":[23,64],"class_list":["post-2761","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","category-ukraine","category-world","tag-ukraine","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/ukrreality.com\/ru\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2761","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/ukrreality.com\/ru\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/ukrreality.com\/ru\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ukrreality.com\/ru\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ukrreality.com\/ru\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2761"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/ukrreality.com\/ru\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2761\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ukrreality.com\/ru\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2763"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/ukrreality.com\/ru\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2761"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ukrreality.com\/ru\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2761"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ukrreality.com\/ru\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2761"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}