Half a billion dollars was not enough for Musk. The reaction in Kyiv, stung by his hostility

Kyiv, from our correspondent. Donald Trump’s attempt to shift the blame for his electoral woes – in particular the rise in fuel prices – onto Ukraine has failed: Americans do not approve of his rapprochement with Russia and Vladimir Putin, not even Republican voters, and even Trump and Vice-President J. D. Vance have had to admit that it was the war in Iran that led to the electoral rejection of the Republican Party, because this is ‘Trump’s war’ – the president who sold himself two years ago as a global peacemaker. In Kyiv, Trump’s about-turn has had dramatically tangible consequences – Ukraine is a country at war, and it measures its allies’ lack of solidarity in terms of lives lost – yet a cautious attitude towards this administration persists. Some are keen to point out that the first US congresswoman born in Ukraine, Victoria Spartz, lost her seat. (Peduzzi continues in Supplement I)

Spartz supported Ukraine in 2022 but then, falling in line with Trump’s hostile stance, opposed aid to Kyiv. She lost – and rightly so.

Then there is the other loser in this election – the most high-profile one, as he is also the biggest individual donor to this election campaign, having contributed almost half a billion dollars: Elon Musk.

Musk commented sarcastically on his own social media platform, X: “So my space-based election-interference lasers didn’t work this time.” Musk is referring to those who accuse him – quite rightly – of intervening personally and via X’s algorithm in favour of many far-right parties in Europe, but sarcasm aside, his defeat is massive, given the money he has spent – over 100 million in Texas, which delivered extraordinary results for the Democratic Party – and because, despite no longer holding an official role in the Trump administration, he continues to wield enormous influence over the US government’s decision-making process. In Kyiv, this influence is overwhelming: the worst-case scenario that could have materialised for the Ukrainians, given his fluctuating relations with Washington, was a reduction in US intelligence-sharing. And that is exactly what happened: for about a week, the Starlink and Starshield systems – which are crucial for operations on the front line – were scaled back, jeopardising the Ukrainian defence forces’ military operations. As is well known, no one in America has been willing to take responsibility for this decision: Musk was the first to comment, stating that Starshield is not under his control but is an arrangement managed by the Pentagon (and paid for by the Europeans – a fact that no one ever emphasises). However, neither Trump, nor the head of the Ministry of Defence, Pete Hegseth, nor the Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, have claimed to have made the decision themselves. Various reports in the international media have since attributed responsibility more to Musk, and indeed this seems a plausible interpretation, given that Starlink is his company.

No one in Ukrainian circles here in Kyiv wants to speak openly about Musk, who is controversial to say the least, but who is a crucial asset in Ukraine’s ability to defend itself against Russian aggression. Some say that the former Ukrainian Defence Minister Mikhailo Fedorov – who, thanks in part to his personal relationship with Musk, had secured Starlink’s indispensable assistance ever since Russia’s large-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 – contacted Musk directly to ask him to restore the operational speed of the satellite constellation on the front line. It is not known how this conversation went; all that is known is that the ‘punishment’ lasted a very long time, despite requests from the entire Ukrainian government to the Trump administration to restore the service. There have certainly been public complaints as well – Volodymyr Zelensky has repeatedly denounced the American ‘mistake’ of putting pressure on Ukraine rather than on Russia – but no one has levelled an explicit and formal accusation at Musk: the tycoon is not well-liked; some say that the fact he has also helped Russia makes him unreliable, whilst others point out that, on the contrary, when Fedorov asked him to use Starlink in the occupied territories to facilitate medium-range attacks on Russian territory, he surprisingly agreed. The caution is easily explained: Ukraine’s defence depends on Musk; as long as there is no alternative, relations cannot be severed.

Building an alternative is the most pressing priority in Ukraine today, both in terms of intelligence and armaments. There are projects with European partners, but their implementation will not be immediate, and Ukraine’s defence cannot wait because, as mentioned, the human cost of this existential struggle would rise to unsustainable levels. There are those who hope that the new US Congress will address ‘the Musk problem’ – that is, the issue of a private entity that can arbitrarily endanger the security of a great many countries. The hope for the forthcoming US institutional framework is that Ukraine will once again become a matter of Western security, rather than a question of square kilometres to be ceded to an aggressor who has not even conquered them.

Paola Peduzzi