- Vladimir Putin asked Elon Musk to withhold Starlink from Taiwan as a favor to China, according to a new report.
- The request came at a time when Moscow relied heavily on trade with Beijing.
- The report cites unnamed officials who say Musk has been in regular contact with Putin since 2022.
Russian leader Vladimir Putin once asked Elon Musk to block access to Starlink from Taiwan as a favor to China’s Xi Jinping, The Wall Street Journal reported.
Edition cited several unnamed current and former government officials in the US, Europe and Russia, who said Musk had been in regular contact with Putin since late 2022.
According to The Journal, the billionaire and world leader would talk about personal matters, business and geopolitics.
The accusations have awkward implications for the US, with Musk’s holding company SpaceX defense and space contracts with the Pentagon and NASA. He published the analysis on Monday The New York Times announced that the company has $3.6 billion in contracts with the Department of Defense — primarily to launch U.S. satellites into orbit — and $11.8 billion with NASA.
The Journal reported that in late 2023, Musk received his first request from the Kremlin to refrain from activating Starlink via Taiwan. The paper quoted a former Russian intelligence officer, whom it did not name.
The report also states that the request was made for the sake of Beijing, rather than Moscow increasingly relied on trade from China.
Based on The Journal’s findings, it’s unclear exactly how many times Putin or his administration asked Musk for a favor.
The Chinese Embassy in Washington told The Journal it was not familiar with the specifics of the arrangement and did not respond to a separate request for comment sent by Business Insider outside regular business hours.
Taiwan does not have official access to Starlink because its laws require satellite services to be provided through a joint venture with a majority-owned local operator. The New York Times reported that SpaceX was unwilling to accept such an arrangement, hence the self-governing island creating its own satellite network in low orbit.
Musk’s reported talks with Putin coincide with his apparent shift in rhetoric toward Ukraine in late 2022. Up until that point, the billionaire had been a vocal supporter of Kiev, providing it with 15,000 Starlink terminals.
By October of that year, he began asking the Pentagon for funds to continue the free services, tweeting to take a financial toll.
Musk too tweeted poll that month on a peace plan that reflected some of Russia’s wartime demands at the time, including Russia’s formal acquisition of Crimea and a guarantee of Ukraine’s neutrality.
The billionaire’s post sparked outrage from pro-Ukraine accounts, but he added that he only suggested the measures to avoid further deaths in Ukraine and the risk of nuclear war.
“Obviously, we are pro-Ukrainian,” he tweeted, saying that SpaceX spent about $80 million on a free Starlink for Ukraine.
Two weeks later, Ian Bremmer, a political scientist who founded the Eurasia Group, wrote in an email to his subscribers that Musk spoke with Putin before announcing this controversial peace plan on Twitter.
According to Bremmer, Putin told Musk that he would turn to a “major escalation” if he could not achieve his goals in Ukraine.
Musk and the Kremlin said Bremmer’s report was untrue. “I’ve only spoken to Putin once and that was about 18 months ago,” Musk tweeted. “The theme was space.”
According to Musk, this conversation with Putin would take place in April 2021, before the Russian invasion began.
In a statement to The Journal, Dmitry Peskov, a Kremlin spokesman, referred to that call as the only time Putin’s office was in contact with Musk.
Putin and Musk discussed “space, as well as current and future technologies,” Peskov said.
The Kremlin office did not respond to a separate request for comment sent by BI outside regular business hours. Musk, SpaceX, the Pentagon and NASA also did not respond to similar requests for comment.
It is unclear whether Musk’s reported talks with Putin will affect his public relationship with former President Donald Trump, which the CEO of SpaceX publicly supported.
In a statement to BI, Karoline Leavitt, Trump’s national press secretary, said Musk is “a once-in-a-generation industry leader and our broken federal bureaucracy could certainly benefit from his ideas and efficiency.”
“As for Putin, there’s only one candidate in the race under whom he hasn’t invaded another country, and that’s President Trump,” Leavitt said. “President Trump has long said he will restore his peace with a strong foreign policy to deter Russian aggression and end the war in Ukraine.”
As Election Day nears, Musk has been actively campaigning for the Republican nominee and has at least contributed $75 million to a super PAC supporting the latter.
Trump has often said that, if re-elected, he would push Ukraine and Russia to reach an agreement to quickly end the war.