Russia’s attacks on SpaceX reflect Kremlin anger at Elon Musk

Bye Wall Street Journal broke with his bombshell story that Elon Musk had been holding “secret conversations” with Vladimir Putin over the past two years, the same timeline marked by an endless stream of Kremlin threats against the SpaceX founder and military attacks on his Starlink satellite terminals. crossing Ukraine.

These threats ranged from dark hints of Musk’s assassination – from the same Kremlin cabal that sent henchmen armed radioactive poloniumor Soviet chemical weapons Novichokto deal with political enemies – to cascading warnings that Russian missiles could be fired at SpaceX satellites circling the globe.

They began in the immediate aftermath of Russia’s blitzkrieg attack on Ukraine in February 2022, when the SpaceX founder began airlifting hundreds, then thousands, then tens of thousands of Starlink transceivers into the beleaguered democracy while Russia stepped up its missile attacks to destroy the internet. infrastructure of the country. . By launching his rings of satellites over the globe, Musk thwarted Moscow’s plan to imprison Ukraine behind a bomb-backed Iron Curtain.

The Kremlin rulers were furious.

Their revenge began when the head of the Russian space agency, who also oversaw the construction of Moscow’s intercontinental ballistic missiles, threatened Musk with personal retribution for providing satellite Internet connections to Ukraine’s “fascist forces.”

The SpaceX leader reacted with eerie humor: “If I die under mysterious circumstances“It was nice meeting you,” Musk tweeted.

The combatant deputy defense minister Putin appointed to lead Roscosmos criticized the creator of the planet’s largest constellation of satellites for allowing Ukraine’s armed defenders to connect across the country using his hyper-tech, ultra-mobile SpaceX Starlink dishes.

“It turns out that the Internet terminals of Elon Musk’s satellite company Starlink were delivered to the militants … by military helicopters,” Dmitry Rogozin, the then general director of Roscosmos, accused him of a fantastic lie. “The Pentagon supplied the Starlink equipment. Elon Musk is thus involved in supplying fascist troops in Ukraine with military communications equipment. And for this, Elon, you will be responsible.”

Thus began a series of threats against Musk that would explode over the next two years, from calls for the Kremlin to deploy troops anti-satellite missiles against its mega-constellation to warn that using Starlinks to launch attacks on occupied Crimea could encourage Russia detonate a nuclear bomb in Ukraine.

Since then, Moscow has deployed advanced Su-34 fighter-bombers, Tornado-S multiple launch rocket systems And Kamikaze drones “Lancet” search and destroy Starlink transceivers throughout Ukraine.

And yet, in a story that ricocheted around the world, Wall Street Journal Last week it was reported that: “Elon Musk, the world’s richest man and the linchpin of the US space effort, has been in regular contact with Russian President Vladimir Putin since late 2022.”

In the dramatically titled “Secret negotiations between Elon Musk and Vladimir Putin“five” WSJ the reporters who wrote the story did not identify any of their sources by name or even government position, but referred to “several current and former American, European and Russian officials.”

“Knowledge of Musk’s Kremlin contacts appears to be a closely guarded government secret,” they said. “Some White House officials said they were unaware of them.”

“One person familiar with these conversations,” they wrote, acknowledged that “the administration has not issued any warnings about possible security violations by Musk.”

A whirlwind of press reports based on WSJ The article spread across continents, and Florida Senator Marco Rubio issued a statement criticizing Musk’s trial in the media: “Anyone who has contracts with the US government is subject to constant security and clearance checks.”

“I will tell you that without SpaceX I don’t know how we will save our astronauts who are stuck in space,” said Senator Rubio. “Given all this, I cannot judge whether Musk called Putin or not, because I don’t know, and he is a private person. If it would jeopardize his clearance, there is a procedure for all of this. This is not through the media…”

One reporter perhaps understands better than anyone else Musk’s attempts to protect himself and SpaceX from bombardment by Kremlin threats while balancing his relationships with the major players in the life-or-death struggle over the invasion of Ukraine: Walter Isaacson , Musk’s handpicked biographer, entered SpaceX’s inner circle for two years while working on his blockbuster book. Elon Muskeven as Russian tanks and missile brigades began pouring across the border to lead the invasion.

Isaacson, who has written a series of best-selling books about world-changing figures such as Albert Einstein and Steve Jobs, says in the memoir that Musk frantically contacted him late one evening in September 2022 to tell him about Russia’s just-released threat to detonate a nuclear warhead in Ukraine. — in retaliation for a planned attack using underwater drones controlled by Starlink technology against the Russian fleet stationed in occupied Crimea.

In an excerpt from the book: “The untold story of Elon Musk support for Ukraine”, published in the magazine Washington PostIsaacson reported that Russia’s ambassador to the United States, Anatoly Antonov, had just warned Musk that the Kremlin would use the most powerful weapons in its arsenal if underwater drones struck its navy.

“The ambassador told him (Musk) directly that a Ukrainian attack on Crimea would lead to a nuclear response,” Isaacson said.

Musk, in turn, rejected calls from Ukraine to expand the range of the Starlink system to reach the Crimean port, headquarters of the Russian Black Sea Fleet, for a planned Pearl Harbor-style landing.

While engaging in behind-the-scenes diplomacy with the Russian envoy to prevent a nuclear attack, Musk also sent an urgent message via Twitter to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky: “Attempting to retake Crimea will result in massive loss of life, will likely fail and risk nuclear war“

The SpaceX chief also rushed to brief White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan and Gen. Mark Milley, then the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, of the looming crisis, Isaacson said.

At the time, President Joe Biden and his security team predicted that the likelihood of Russia dropping a nuclear bomb on Ukraine had increased dramatically, according to the report New York Times.

“Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly threatened to use nuclear weapons against Ukraine, including during the crisis in October 2022, when Mr. Biden and his aides, reviewing intercepts of conversations between senior Russian commanders, feared that likelihood of using nuclear weapons could rise to 50 percent or even higher,” Time reported.

Could Musk’s moves to de-escalate the conflict through his back-channel talks with Ambassador Antonov and restrictions on the use of Starlinks by the Ukrainian democratic resistance be one of the factors tipping the scales in favor of Russia freezing its plan to deploy tactical nuclear weapons?

Musk has been criticized in the US for imposing restrictions on Ukraine’s use of Starlink navigation and guidance technology as a weapon, but whether this helped prevent a Russian nuclear attack remains a mystery.

His imposition of territorial restrictions on the use of SpaceX Starlink technology by the Ukrainian resistance coincided with a White House ban on the use of American weapons to hit targets inside Russia, he says. Ron GurantzAssociate Professor at the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University.

Professor Gurantz, an expert on space energy and security, writing for the US Army Institute of Strategic Studies, argues that Musk “decided not to activate Starlink because he feared that such an attack could cause an escalation or perhaps even a nuclear war between Russia and the United States.” . United States”.

“Would the US government make the same decision?”

The US has also refrained from supplying Ukraine with weapons that could reach Crimea, Professor Gurantz reported in his fascinating, just-published study: “Satellites in the Russian-Ukrainian war“

“Moreover, recent reports suggest that the Biden-Harris administration at the time was extremely concerned about a scenario in which a Ukrainian offensive in Crimea could provoke Russia to use nuclear weapons.”

“The decision to restrict Starlink,” Gurantz concluded, “might not have been different if government officials were involved.”