President Donald Trump appears to be working almost hand-in-hand with Russian President Vladimir Putin’s all-out ballistic missile assault on Ukraine’s energy grid and civilian population.
Russia’s recent assaults on Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital, have been reminiscent of Putin’s devastating attacks in Syria, Georgia and Chechnya. Russia flattened cities with missiles and aerial bombardment killing thousands of men, women and children.
Ukraine was hit by up to 30 ballistic missiles without warning from the United States for a second night.
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In all three instances, strikes targeted civilian infrastructure, electrical stations, bakeries, water stations, and medical facilities. Human rights organizations and Western governments charged that Russia was engaging in war crimes.
Now Trump and Elon Musk are engaging as accerssories to those same war crimes by cutting Ukraine’s Starshield Internet service, run by Musk’s Starlink. The Pentagon has been paying for the service.
Last year, Musk said “no matter how much I disagree with the Ukraine policy, Starlink will never turn off its terminals… We would never do such a thing or use it as a bargaining chip.”
Starshield terminals are used for nearly everything on the battlefield: the cars that carry troops and matériel, the drones that ferry food and water to soldiers at the front, and the attack drones that fly long distances to hit Russian positions, according to The New York Times.
Ukraine’s defense ministry said today SpaceX had without warning, restricted the use of Starshield for devices traveling faster than 100 miles per hour. Anything over that losese its connection.
Russia would be able to reopen crucial supply routes in a matter of days, and could better protect oil refineries and other internal targets from Ukrainian attacks, The Times reported.
Trump’s has been pressuring Ukraine to stop long-range strikes on Russia’s oil refineries, according to reports. The throttling of StarShield appears directed at Ukrainian missiles and drones striking Russia.
Trump also wants a peace agreement in the Ukraine war and wants to preside over the settlement in December at the upcoming G20 summit at his Doral, Fla., golf resort.
Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky are expected to attend.
Trump is reeling from another snub by the Nobel Prize committee, which awarded his long-coveted Peace prize to Navanethem “Navi” Pillay, an 85-year-old South African judge and former High Commissioneer for the United Nations Commission on Human Rights.
But his latest action is sparking outrage across Europe. Poland today also called out SpaceX billionaire Musk for restricting access to Starlink satellite terminals across Ukraine.
“Hey, @elonmusk, big man, are you playing politics with your products again?” Polish foreign minister Radoslaw Sikorski wrote in a post on X on today. “As your European customers, we are watching you.”
Several combat missions failed on Tuesday evening as because of the shutdown, a Ukrainian military technology advisor told the UK Guardian newspaper.
Think tank, the Lansing Institute, noted that the incident severely damages European trust in the United States and its weapons systems.
It signals to EU allies that critical battlefield technology under U.S. control can be used as sudden political leverage during disputes with Washington.
Keith Girard has four decades of experience as an award-winning reporter, editor-in-chief, and senior media executive. Keith’s career began in Washington, D.C., where he was a reporter for The Washington Post and a contributing editor for Regardie’s and Washingtonian magazines. He also worked as a writer/producer in CNN’s Washington Bureau and has written non-fiction books on the U.S. Marines in the Gulf War and Donald Trump and two novels, “The Heidelberg Conundrum” and “The Curse of Northam Bay.”