Zelenskyy Asked Trump to Allow the Use of Starlink in Russia — The Atlantic
During a closed-door meeting at the White House on July 28, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy reportedly asked Donald Trump to grant permission to use Starlink on Russian territory. According to media reports, the request concerned using the system to target Russian ballistic missile launchers.
This idea, which had not been previously reported, offers the U.S. a way to avoid supplying Ukraine with interceptor missiles for the Patriot systems, whose stockpiles have been drastically reduced due to the war in Iran. Instead, Ukraine would expand its use of another American technology: the Starlink satellite communications network, controlled by Elon Musk.
According to two officials who spoke on condition of anonymity, Zelenskyy asked Trump to secure Musk’s permission to use Starlink to guide drone strikes on Russian territory. A third official also confirmed Zelenskyy’s request.
Until now, Musk had allowed Ukraine to use Starlink only within its own territory, specifically in Crimea and other regions occupied by Russia. However, Musk’s company, SpaceX, has restricted the use of Starlink within Russian territory.
During talks with Trump on Tuesday, Zelenskyy explained the need to strike small and mobile targets on Russian territory, such as ballistic missile batteries that Russian troops have used to launch attacks on cities across Ukraine.
During his visit to the U.S. this week, Zelenskyy requested a meeting with Musk to discuss his plan to take out these launchers, but, according to one person involved in the talks, the billionaire declined the invitation.
During a meeting at the White House, Trump told his Ukrainian counterpart that he would consider these requests but did not indicate whether he would ultimately agree to them, according to one official.
One official said that Trump’s final decision on Zelenskyy’s proposal would likely depend largely on whether the U.S. president believes it could help bring the conflict to a quicker end. If he believes that the use of Starlink will enable Ukraine to force Putin to the negotiating table, then Trump may support the proposal. But if he believes it will only escalate the situation, he will likely not support it, one of the officials said.
Zelenskyy also emphasized to Trump that Ukraine needs to counter the missile threat before winter sets in, when Russia may again attempt to disable Ukraine’s power grid and heating systems, according to two officials familiar with the talks.
Source: The Atlantic
As a reminder, on the night of July 30, Russian forces carried out one of the largest combined attacks on Ukraine, using more than 70 missiles and over 280 attack drones. Kyiv and the surrounding region, as well as the Dnipropetrovsk, Lviv, Poltava, Kharkiv, Mykolaiv, Sumy, Vinnytsia, Cherkasy, and Ivano-Frankivsk regions, came under fire.
In Poland, during the massive Russian missile attack on Ukraine on the night of July 30, an air raid alert was issued in part of the Lublin Voivodeship. After the alert ended, a crater about 10 meters in diameter and debris from an unidentified object were discovered in a field near the villages of Tarnava-Kolonia and Tokary.
