America is boycotting European projects that support Kyiv. The resistance in Kramatorsk

After eleven days of restrictions, with drones falling from the sky and military operations against the invading Russians called off, Starlink and Starshield have resumed operations in Ukraine: the cost of this American decision is incalculable; alongside the damage and the deaths, the shards of Kyiv’s trust in Washington lie scattered. Elon Musk, owner of the satellite constellation on which many of Ukraine’s military operations on the front line depend, has offered an explanation – so to speak – for the decision to restrict the service, which ultimately appears to have been his own: the Ukrainians violated Starlink’s terms of use by employing it offensively ‘to kill people’, and so the restrictions were introduced.

Musk claims to have done more than anyone else to help the Ukrainians, but a contract is a contract, and now even the (non-existent) Russian conscripts are dying, so all the warmongers who are ‘pushing for perpetual bloodshed’ might as well ‘burn in hell’. For Starshield, the issue is slightly different, and it closely concerns Europeans because this ‘military package’ was paid for by Europeans, particularly the Germans, as Julia Ioffe wrote in Puck, describing all the details. Thus Washington—presumably the Pentagon—has scaled back a vital service for the Ukrainians, for which it does not even pay, but which is instead funded by the Europeans. This is also what is happening with PURL, the mechanism through which Europeans purchase American weapons and deliver them to the Ukrainians: Yesterday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said he has been waiting for a month for the head of the Pentagon, Pete Hegseth, to sign off on the delivery of the requested Patriot and NASAMS systems. PURL, which is a service paid for by the Europeans, is no longer functioning at the behest of the Americans, who have nevertheless taken the orders. When the Trump Administration undermines Ukraine’s defence, it undermines the defence of the whole of Europe.

On the front line, matters have become more complicated, but the defeatism surrounding what is happening there is, as ever, excessive: Kramatorsk and Sloviansk, Ukrainian towns, are under heavy and sustained Russian bombardment. Vladimir Putin wants to make them unliveable and force the citizens to abandon them, but Ukrainian soldiers will continue to hold their ground. They are not ‘falling’; they are holding out, as always, just like all these Ukrainian towns in the Donbas: it is true that Putin wanted to capture them, but the Ukrainian army’s Operation Vivaldi prevented him from doing so.