Why is Elon Musk sabotaging Ukraine?

Jon Sopel (0:02)

This is a Global Production.

Lewis Goodall (0:04)

I recognize that he is carrying the heaviest of weights right now, and it is extremely difficult for him. What I have to do in my role is try and repair bridges so that the support comes back. And therefore, I should, at this moment in time, be careful in terms of laying the ground to bring people back together. That is the role I intend to play. It's the right role for me to play in this moment. I will listen to President Zelenskyy carefully, but he won't be going away from Britain today empty-handed.

Emily Maitlis (0:40)

That is Andy Burnham explaining why he's not just stocking it to Trump over Trump's disastrous approach to Russia. He wants to be the mediator because he knows Zelenskyy is now in real trouble.

Jon Sopel (0:55)

And it's getting worse for Zelenskyy, because Elon Musk has joined in to, with access to his satellite system, vital for Ukrainian defense. Why is Elon Musk getting involved at all?

Welcome to The News Agents.

Lewis Goodall (1:16)

The News Agents.

Jon Sopel (1:17)

It's Jon.

Emily Maitlis (1:18)

It's Maitlis.

Jon Sopel (1:19)

And Volodymyr Zelenskyy is in Downing Street this afternoon for talks with Andy Burnham. Of course, Zelenskyy does a lot of traveling around, meeting European leaders and anyone who will offer support to Ukraine. But you do feel that over the past six days, something has materially changed. There hasn't been another bust up in the White House, like there was when Donald Trump first came to power, and there was that awful, awful scenes with Zelenskyy and JD Vance and the president. There hasn't been that.

But in terms of action and actions taken, it has been catastrophic for Ukraine in the way that the US has got involved and decided it wants to throw its weight behind Russia. No longer an independent arbiter trying to bring peace, but seemingly firmly now on Russia's side, and Elon Musk has decided to join the fray and come in as well on the side of Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin.

Emily Maitlis (2:21)

Overnight, Russia launched a massive ballistic missile attack and a drone attack which hit Ukrainian energy infrastructure.

This was just days, of course, after Washington had announced this pretendy ceasefire between Kiev and Moscow, something that I don't think had been run past, certainly Zelenskyy, who knows if Putin knew about it.

Zelenskyy basically says, some 600,000 people are now left without power, and it was an entirely deliberate attack on the country's infrastructure. Zelenskyy is in London today, and what you heard at the very beginning was Burnham, who kind of, I think probably understands the anger that many people in this country feel towards Trump's approach now to Ukraine, and Trump's approach, his proximity to Putin and to Russia. And what we are trying to understand is whether Burnham can essentially help Zelenskyy in concrete ways without angering Trump, without starting another war between Trump and the UK. And what is making this so infinitely much worse is the role that Elon Musk is playing. Now, Elon Musk, as you know, controls, well, pretty much anything he wants to on social media via X. But he also controls the skies. He controls the satellite system. He controls Starlink. And these new Starlink measures that he has put in place make Ukraine unable to keep their satellite connection to the base. In other words, their feeds are cut off. They don't know what's happening. They don't see live video feeds. They don't see remote control. They can't do real time tracking for military units and drones. And this whole war is being fought, we know, in the sky with drones, frankly, with pieces of 3D printed plastic that is zooming around the sky the whole time. Starlink can see those things. Starlink can offer real intelligence to Ukraine and to Ukraine's troops to know what's coming at them and how they can fight back. Without Starlink, it's essentially like somebody shutting off the lights and you're left completely in the dark.

Jon Sopel (4:48)

Yeah, and Elon Musk owns SpaceX, and Starlink is part of SpaceX.

And what Elon Musk has done is control the speeds at which the satellites can see things. And so, weapons are flying too fast now for the kind of space link downloads to interrupt them. And he has controlled that. Elon Musk has chosen to affect the speeds at which you are able to download this material, leaving Ukraine vulnerable. And at the weekend, Musk said, Zelenskyy has gone too far in his strikes on Russian oil infrastructure.

Hang on. No one elects... You're a businessman, Mr. Musk. You're not a politician. You are deciding, are you now, who wins a war and who loses it by what you think is right and what you think is wrong? You're not the president of the United States of America. But what you're doing is ingratiating yourself again with Donald Trump. And we saw it. There was an AI summit or a super intelligence summit, as we're now instructed to call it the other week. Who was sitting next to Donald Trump in the White House? Elon Musk is back in and doing Donald Trump's bidding as well.