An earlier version of this article incorrectly reported that Elon Musk cut off Starlink satellite service to Ukraine’s military as it was attacking a Russian fleet in Crimea last year, based on a new biography of Musk by historian and journalist Walter Isaacson. Isaacson has since said that the account in his book is wrong, and that Musk had never enabled Starlink service within 100 kilometers of the Crimean coast. When the Ukrainians asked that he turn it on to enable their attack, Musk refused, Isaacson now says. This article has been updated to reflect that change.
A Russian missile strike hit Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s hometown of Kryvyi Rih early Friday, leaving at least one dead and more than 70 injured, emergency officials said. The strike destroyed a police administration building, killing one policeman, according to Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko on Telegram. It also damaged some residential buildings, he said. Rescuers at the scene were working to pull people out “from under the rubble” and extinguish fires, he added.
A top Ukrainian official criticized SpaceX owner Elon Musk after a new biography said he refused to allow Ukraine to use its Starlink satellite internet service last year to guide submarine drones in an attack on the Russian Black Sea Fleet. Musk defended his decision overnight, saying he did not want SpaceX to be “explicitly complicit in a major act of war and conflict escalation.”
Here’s the latest on the war and its impact across the globe.
Ukraine on Friday froze the assets of Ihor Kolomoisky, a tycoon facing graft allegations, already under indictment and sanctions in the United States over accusations of bank fraud. Ukraine’s anti-graft office said it had frozen shares in more than 300 companies under his control, along with real estate and vehicles, amounting to a value of more than $80 million. Kolomoisky was the main owner of PrivatBank, the country’s largest savings bank, which was nationalized after he was accused of being responsible for the disappearance of billions of dollars of bank assets.
A new biography of Musk highlighted the major influence SpaceX has had in the conflict. Walter Isaacson’s biography, which was excerpted in a Washington Post opinion article, said the Ukrainian military had planned a submarine drone attack near the Crimean coast in the fall of 2022, and that Musk told engineers to turn off Starlink coverage there, so the drones “lost connectivity and washed ashore harmlessly.” However, Isaacson later wrote on X that he had mischaracterized the incident, and that “the Ukrainians THOUGHT coverage was enabled all the way to Crimea,” but in fact Musk had refused to enable it.
Musk said that the drone attack had been intended “to sink most of the Russian fleet at anchor” and that he had received an “emergency request” from Ukrainian authorities to “activate Starlink all the way to Sevastopol.” He said that if he had agreed to the request, his company would have been “complicit in a major act of war.” However, Zelensky adviser Mykhailo Podolyak claimed Musk’s interference led to the deaths of civilians, calling them “the price of a cocktail of ignorance and big ego.” Russia has illegally occupied Crimea since 2014.
Biden and other world leaders are arriving in New Delhi for the Group of 20 economic summit, with the war in Ukraine among issues taking center stage. The summit gets underway Saturday. Russian President Vladimir Putin will not be attending; Russia’s defense minister is expected to take his place. Charles Michel, president of the European Council, wrote on social media that the war in Ukraine would be a key issue.
Ukraine has lambasted Russian elections in occupied areas of Ukraine as a “sham.” Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry said Friday that elections being staged by Russia are “worthless” and have no legal standing, Reuters reported. Moscow is holding regional elections in four Ukrainian areas that it does not fully control — Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson. The United States, Europe and others have also condemned the move.
A Pentagon official defended a U.S. decision to supply Ukraine with depleted uranium munitions that are capable of piercing armor, pushing back on claims from the Russian Embassy in Washington that such weapons cause cancer. “Even the [International Atomic Energy Agency] has stated unequivocally that there is no proven link between D.U. exposure and increases in cancers or significant health or environmental impacts,” Sabrina Singh, the Pentagon’s deputy press secretary, said at a Thursday news briefing.
As many as 90 percent of Ukrainian prisoners of war held by Russia have faced torture, rape, threats of sexual violence or other ill treatment, according to accusations leveled by Ukraine’s prosecutor general, Andriy Kostin, during a meeting with the U.N. special rapporteur on torture.
Zelensky introduced his new defense minister, Rustem Umerov. In his nightly address, Zelensky described Umerov, a Crimean Tatar, as a “strong person” who “can reboot the work of the Ministry of Defense.” His appointment follows the resignation of Oleksii Reznikov as defense minister, amid a wide-ranging crackdown on allegations of graft in the ministry as Ukraine seeks to project to its Western backers a hard-line stance on the issue.
Russian forces have largely been holding their positions in Ukraine’s counteroffensive, analysts say. They have adapted and are “using their experience of this war” to fight Ukrainian forces to a grinding standstill, Ian Matveev, a Russian military analyst for the Anti-Corruption Foundation, told The Post. Still, Ukraine appears to be making some progress, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said in a speech to the European Parliament, noting that there is “difficult fighting,” but that the counteroffensive is “gradually gaining ground.” In his nightly address, Zelensky thanked brigades in the east and south for the “very, very effective destruction of the occupiers.”
Secretary of State Antony Blinken praised the “extraordinary resilience of the Ukrainian people” on Thursday while visiting a school where Russian forces had held more than 100 Ukrainians hostage. Before leaving Ukraine, where he pledged more than $1 billion in additional U.S. aid, Blinken also visited a border guard facility in the Kyiv region and a field that is being cleared of unexploded Russian ordnance.
Russia has “no place” at next year’s Paris Olympics at a time “when it has committed war crimes and deported children,” French President Emmanuel Macron told L’Equipe newspaper, according to the Associated Press.
Vice President Harris said it would be a “huge mistake” for North Korea to provide military support to Russia in an interview with CBS News. Russian President Vladimir Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un are expected to meet in Russia this month to discuss possible weapons deals.
Spanish importation of Russian gas is on the rise, according to new government data, Reuters reported. Even as overall imports fell, and amid E.U. pressure to reduce dependence on Russian gas, Madrid is becoming more reliant on Moscow for energy: Some 28 percent of Spain’s gas came from Russia in July, a nearly 100-percent jump in share year-on-year.
Prigozhin confidant says fatal plane crash shows no one is safe: Maksim Shugalei, one of Wagner chief Yevgeniy Prigozhin’s trusted political influence peddlers, wrote on Telegram that the Aug. 23 plane crash, which killed Prigozhin and nine others on board, shows that no one is safe, “despite their merits, position, social status.”
“If we are talking about internal forces, this means only one thing to me,” he wrote. “In our country, no word given by anyone to anyone at any level can be trusted anymore.”
Western analysts believe Putin probably ordered Prigozhin’s death as retribution for the short-lived mutiny he led in June, Robyn Dixon and Francesca Ebel write.
Serhiy Morgunov contributed to this repo