Volodymyr Zelenskyy: The speed limits on Starlink and Starshield are still there
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What’s actually going on in Ukraine is that there is a massive incentive difference between the elites and the people.
The former have grown very rich off the hundreds of billions flowing to Ukraine, while the latter’s children are conscripted to die in trenches.
A private citizen turning off a military system with everyone in the administration ok with it?
He is just so insufferable.
Almost like he's the elite he's complaining about.
Always projection.
Last I’ve heard, most civilians polled want the war to end…but would rather keep fighting than end without concessions Russia isn’t willing (IIRC restoring occupied territory, maybe NATO). But I think that was over a year ago.
Personally (I a non-Ukrainian) think it’s horrendous they physically kidnap young men and place them in the front lines, which they are accused of and probably to some extent doing. I doubt it’s effective, and if it’s that or lose, they’ve already lost. But if the Ukrainian majority in Ukraine does not want to officially surrender, and I can definitely understand why, we should keep supporting them. Otherwise it should end. Though if denying weapons and other resources is unlikely to reduce the bloodshed, we should continue providing them but change our messaging, using that evidence to persuade other nations.
The Trump administration has all the hallmarks of Russian assets, and Elon "please invite me to your wildest parties mr Epstein" Musk is no different. Once you start to look at those bunch through that perspective, their once incomprehensible and self defeating stunts start to make sense.
Hillary Clinton warned all you guys that Trump was a Russian asset and you learned nothing.
I mean it was pretty obvious he was in with Russia whereas Rubio seemed quite decent. Why did the republicans choose the asset?
Am I the only one who feels like throwing up?
Bearing in mind this war has absolutely nothing to do with the private American citizen.
Seems especially dangerous for the American citizen to be required to provide this support now that Russia is destroying Starlink stations in response - see the stories from Lithuania and Poland:
https://www.aerotime.aero/articles/lithuania-starlink-arson-...
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cmp30r1klk37o
Just for the record, I support Ukraine in its defence against Russia's illegal and outrageous invasion. However, I don't understand by which moral or legal code, Elon Musk is required to provide direct military assistance to them?
Musk broke the SLA and Ukrainians died because of it. No warning that SpaceX would cripple it during a time when Russia heavily attacked Ukraine.
Ukraine uses it to defend itself on its own soil. It”s not using it for deep strikes in Russia.
Musk thinks he’s above the law and can play with Ukrainian lives.
Starshield has different T&Cs, of course, but that network is wholly governed by the Pentagon, not by Musk
I don’t understand why everyone is making Elon Musk the bad guy here, but it does seem to be a peculiar quirk of the HN audience.
Ukraine uses it for defensive purposes, not offensive. Starlink is disabled on Russian territory.
Musk alongside Trump want Zelenskyy gone (receipts are there) and he thought pressuring him by crippling access to Starlink would do it or at least get him to stop attacking Putin's oil refineries.
What if he's telling the truth and it wasn't him that disabled it? How is it that you have obtained evidence as to internal operational procedures of Starlink/Starshield/Pentagon that make you better qualified than Musk to judge who carried out an action?
And why would Ukraine deserve any kind of warning? Surely if anyone breaks the very clear T&Cs by using Starlink in weaponry, then they should expect the service to be withdrawn, or at best, temporarily limited.
> Ukraine uses it for defensive purposes, not offensive
Ukraine have blurred the line since they started attacking energy infrastructure and civilian data centres etc deep inside Russia, with loss of Russian civilian life. I'll say it again - I support Ukraine vs Russia's illegal invasion. However, from Starlink's PoV, Ukraine is using its network for military attacks on Russian civilian infrastructure, which gives Russia the right (arguably) to attack Starlink infrastructure (e.g. ground stations). Why would Musk allow this to happen?
> Musk alongside Trump want Zelenskyy gone (receipts are there) and he thought pressuring him by crippling access to Starlink would do it or at least get him to stop attacking Putin's oil refineries.
That's a possible motivation, although speculative at this point. And it seems certain people are strenuously trying to paint Musk as the bad guy in this, and any other circumstances they can find. There's some partisan noise and speculation that we need to remove in order to find the truth here.
Because he admitted that he was behind throttling Starlink.
> And why would Ukraine deserve any kind of warning?
Because Ukrainian lives are at stake? If you owned Starlink, would you just cripple it without warning them first? This is not some SaaS service. People died because Ukraine wasn't able to defend itself from Russian jet powered drones.
>However, from Starlink's PoV, Ukraine is using its network for military attacks on Russian civilian infrastructure
Again, Ukraine doesn't use Starlink to attack Russia. It uses it to defend itself on their own territory.
>That's a possible motivation, although speculative at this point.
Trump and Musk both said Zelenskyy needs to be replaced. Trump said it on TV and Musk on Twitter. And they also parrot Russian propaganda and claiming he won't allow elections, even though it's in Ukrainian's constitution that elections can't be held when there is a war.
People in the west want Russia to lose badly that they have no problem sacrificing some other country as their proxy just like Afghanistan war with Russia. Afghanistan became dust and land of warlords and did not become a democratic country and still running perma wars and it has been what, 40 years!?
Are they planning to continue this till all the kids in Ukraine die? For how many years?
Americans don't want the war to end either. They were part of the playbook at the onset. They are pretending to want to end the war. What they want is for Europe to finance the war without their contribution.
You can’t have diplomacy with a group who systematically rapes and murders entire families.
You can’t have diplomacy with a group who purposefully targets civilians with reckless abandon instead of legitimate military targets to kill the people.
You can’t have diplomacy with a group who doesn’t believe you exist or should exist. That it would be better to execute you than negotiate with you.
You cannot have diplomacy with a group who brought mobile crematories to disappear your citizens. Who had lists for who should be be killed.
You cannot have diplomacy with a group who does not want diplomacy.
Early in WW2 the Jews would stand in line for hours to wait and be shot. They would queue politely to be executed. That is what “diplomacy” looks like in this case.
Ukraine was on the verge of surrendering early in the war. Then news of the Bucha atrocities reached the Ukrainian Leadership and they refused to surrender. Because surrender means certain death. That’s the thing folks don’t seem to get.. if you’re fate is to die.. or to fight and have a chance at not dying.
You fight.
Most of Europe did not take care of their jews or helped them. They allied with Germans like vishy France. US turned back a ship of Jews that were escaping the war. USA's interest was in far east against Japan. They dumped the nukes on civilian populations there to solidify their takeover of Hawaii .. what a high morals.. wow!
We should never have allowed this private citizen to be in a position where he has a hand in the spigot of defense infrastructure, dictating the outcome of foreign policy by fiat because he’s a company owner.
He only has allegiance to himself.
I think hobbling Starlink is the wrong direction - they should increase access to let Ukraine take out missile launchers in Russia.