Elon Musk told Pentagon that he spoke to president Putin directly: Report

Musk made the comments during an October conversation with Colin Kahl, then the Pentagon's top policy official, about Ukrainian forces losing connection to Space X's Starlink service

By Craig Trudell

Elon Musk told Pentagon officials during a call about the satellite-based internet SpaceX supplies to Ukraine’s military that he’d spoken personally with Russian President Vladimir Putin, the New Yorker reported.
 

Musk made the comments during an October conversation with Colin Kahl, then the Pentagon’s top policy official, about Ukrainian forces losing connection to Space Exploration Technologies Corp.’s Starlink service as they entered territory contested by Russia, the magazine said Monday.

“My inference was that he was getting nervous that Starlink’s involvement was increasingly seen in Russia as enabling the Ukrainian war effort, and was looking for a way to placate Russian concerns,” Kahl told the New Yorker.

Musk didn’t immediately respond to an emailed request for comment. Kahl, who returned to a position at Stanford University last month, didn’t immediately respond to inquiries. A Pentagon spokesperson also didn’t respond to a request for comment.

In October, Musk, SpaceX’s chief executive officer, denied that he had spoken to Putin. In a post on Twitter, the social media platform he’s since renamed X, the billionaire wrote that he’d spoken to the Russian president only once, roughly 18 months earlier, about space.

The magazine report revives the controversy that erupted after Musk posted what he described as peace plans that the Kremlin praised and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy criticized. Soon thereafter, Ukrainian troops reported Starlink outages and Musk threatened to stop funding Ukraine’s access to the service.