The Russian president had sought help from the billionaire regarding Starlink.
Tech billionaire Elon Musk has been in regular contact with Russian President Vladimir Putin since late 2022, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal.
According to the Journal’s intelligence sources, conversations between Musk and Putin continued until this year, even as Musk began criticizing US military support for Ukraine and became actively involved in the election campaign of Republican candidate and former President Donald Trump.
According to sources, Putin once made a request to Musk not to activate his Starlink satellite internet service over Taiwan at the behest of Chinese President Xi Jinping.
The big claim comes at a crucial time in the US election campaign, but the businessman’s influence extends far beyond politics. Musk has high-level security clearance, access to megabucks contracts, and sensitive information from the US government through his social network platform X and his tech company SpaceX.
The Starlink satellite internet service highlights a key aspect of Musk’s influence: the billionaire provided his service to Ukraine for free when Putin launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
It was praised for significantly boosting the Ukrainian army’s ability to fight against Russian forces, but relations between Ukrainian authorities and Musk grew cold during the war. Musk halted funding of terminals for Ukraine and even banned the use of Starlink to control military drones.
In October 2022, Musk began tweeting some of the Kremlin’s views on the war, which he presented as a peace plan, but it sparked a strong response from top Kyiv officials, even President Volodymyr Zelensky.
In early 2024, Ukrainian military intelligence reports said Musk’s satellite service was being used by Russian forces on the Ukrainian front.
According to Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov, there was only one phone call between the Kremlin and Musk in which they discussed “space, current and future technologies.”
According to the Wall Street Journal, information about Musk’s Kremlin contacts is a closely held secret in the US administration, and several White House officials said they were not aware of it.
Musk has not yet responded to the reports and did not respond to a request for comment from the Wall Street Journal.
