Why is Elon Musk sabotaging Ukraine? | The News Agents

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. Some 600,000 people are now left without power. Elon Musk has decided to join the fray and come in as well on the side of Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin. He controls the satellite system, he controls Starlink. 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. The News Agents podcast is brought to you by HSBC UK, opening up a world of opportunity. This is a global production. I recognise 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 Zelensky carefully, but he won't be going away from Britain today empty-handed. That is Andy Burnham explaining why he's not just socking it to Trump over Trump's disastrous approach to Russia. He wants to be the mediator because he knows Zelensky is now in real trouble. And it's getting worse for Zelensky because Elon Musk has joined in too with access to his satellite system vital for Ukrainian defense why is Elon Musk getting involved at all welcome to the news agents the news agents it's John it's Maitlis and Volodymyr Zelensky is in Downing Street this afternoon for talks with Andy Burnham and of course Zelensky 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 uh scenes uh with Zelensky 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 yeah overnight Russia launched a massive ballistic missile attack and a drone attack which hit Ukrainian energy infrastructure. And this was just days, of course, after Washington had denounced this pretendy ceasefire between Kiev and Moscow, something that I don't think had been run past certainly Zelensky, who knows if Putin knew about it. And Zelensky basically says some 600,000 people are now left without power. And it was an entirely deliberate attack on the country's infrastructure. Zelensky 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 Zelensky 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, Well, 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 has been fought, we know, in the sky with drones, with 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. 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 kind of 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 uh musk said zelensky has gone too far in his strikes on Russian oil infrastructure hang on no one in Europe you're a businessman mr musk you're not a politician you are deciding right 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 yeah i mean i guess we don't really know do we whether musk is acting on his own back or he's acting at the request of the Trump administration either way it's a big flex of power and this is the man who we know has been helping Trump fund the midterms to the tune of some what 300 million dollars to help kind of keep Republicans in their seats or win races where they're particularly tight so all the stuff that we remember you know you're an asshole you're an asshole you know the sort of falling out over Doge seems to have evaporated now they are both firmly back on the same side and that side is Russia that side is Putin as of now. Sorry Emily, you just said there 300 million I don't think we could just pass over that so quickly, a hell of a lot of money I mean just think how everyone is losing their ---- in this country over you know a couple of few million being going to Reform party, 300 million makes Musk by far and away the biggest donor and he's just concentrating on Republican races because he wants to be in with the Republican party again and we saw it before the 2024 election where he wanted to throw his money around and he He's doing it again. But it's not just I mean, I would be kind of OK, sanguine almost about it because money is needed to fight American elections. It's him interfering in American foreign policy so blatantly and making life even more difficult for the poor, benighted Ukrainians who are having every night to survive these bloody awful raids that are coming from the Russians. and Musk has got a product which helps and the Ukrainians were happy to pay for it and Musk is saying, no, you can't have it because I am taking a view on what American foreign policy should be and which side I'm on in this war. I mean, it's awful. That's the point, isn't it? It's the instability. If you're Zelensky of thinking that you don't want to upset Trump because he might not be on your side the next morning if you do. And so when he's criticising these ballistic missile strikes, these drone strikes from Putin, he ends up saying that when Zelensky is criticising these ballistic missile strikes, the drone strikes by Putin, he ends up saying that Putin has disrespected Trump. It's almost like he's remembering that time in the White House in February of last year, where if he plays his cards wrong, if he raises his temper, or if he suggests in any way that Trump is the bad actor in this, then he will get, you know, hell opening and he will invite a whole load of opprobrium from the U.S. president so he has to keep pretending somehow that Putin has crossed Trump when it's become pretty much clear to the whole world that those two are in cahoots now there's money to be made and that's the way it's going. Well we're joined now by the former U.S. ambassador to NATO Kurt Volker um and was part of the you know you were the special representative for negotiations with Ukraine in Trump's first term when you see what has happened and i'm just going to narrow the time scale to the past week the agreement to buy Russian diesel uh the kind of saying that there is a ceasefire on energy infrastructure when there isn't the bombing that's taken place the doubling down i mean what do you think yeah you know it's really stunning to see all of these things. The thing that jumps out at me most is that Trump really seems to be panicking about the midterm elections. It is clear when you look at the polling numbers, you know, whether it's right direction, wrong track in the country, generic vote for Democrats in the House, President Trump's own negative approval ratings, these things are getting worse and worse. And so I think he's very concerned they're going to have a serious set of losses in November. As a result of that, I think he wanted to be seen to be doing something about diesel prices. I can't imagine that he actually believes that 300,000 tons of Russian diesel is going to make any difference in the U.S. market or in global markets, but he just wants to be able to say he's doing something. Frankly, I don't think that that is going to work with the voters. And then, because Zelensky does not heed his call to stop bombing refineries in Russia, now he's upset at Zelensky again. And so you start seeing these questions about intelligence support, about continued arms supplies. And it appears that overnight, Starlink, acting perhaps on its own or perhaps with some guidance from the administration, has actually prevented Starlink from being used by the Ukrainian military at speeds in excess of somewhere between 70 or 100 kilometers per hour, which effectively negates their ability to use drones, jet drones, to go after some of the targets in Russia that they have been going after. Kurt, I just wonder on a personal level, is there any doubt in your mind now that Donald Trump prefers Putin to Zelensky? Well, no, that's been very clear for some time, just the way he talks about them. It's striking to me that he calls on Ukraine to stop hitting Russian refineries, but he's not calling on Russia to stop attacking Ukrainian civilians and cities and energy infrastructure and so forth. It's it's really it really stands out the fact that it's not at least a reciprocal call for both of them to stop. So I think that's there. He also has called for Zelensky to be voted out, to be replaced. He's never said that about Vladimir Putin. Yeah. And so Zelensky, as we know, is in London today with our prime minister, Andy Burnham. And I don't know if you heard Burnham's words. He sounded almost apologetic in the comments, sort of like, don't ask me to call out Trump. I'm just trying to be the mediator here. What do you think Zelensky really needs now from the allies, from us? Right. Well, let's hope that all these conversations are behind closed doors and we don't get too much out in public on this. But what I think Ukraine needs is to start finding workarounds in case there are shutoffs of U.S. intelligence or there are shutoffs of U.S. arms supplies or Starlink doesn't come back. So we've got to start, Ukrainians have to start looking at what are the plan B, plan C that they can start working on so that they can survive this winter. Kurt, you've been a diplomat for decades and you've seen how the interface works between diplomacy and domestic politics and election cycles and the like. have you ever known anything like this where a midterm election is determining something as geopolitically important as Russia's invasion of Ukraine and whether it succeeds or not yeah i have to say it's hard to think of an example there is always as you say an interplay between domestic politics and foreign policy but this seems to be a very extreme case and what it seems is that President Trump is so focused on his domestic political needs that he's just using these various issues in foreign affairs, national security as devices in order to try to get voters to stick with him. Yet these are very serious issues. People's lives are at stake. And we've seen Russia in the last few days killing hundreds of civilians in Ukraine with the strikes that they're doing. These things do matter. By buying diesel from Russia, I mean, let's spell it out. Trump is now helping Russia fund its own war against Ukraine. So economically, Trump is putting himself on the side, essentially, of Putin and Putin's troops. I just wonder if there isn't anyone around him, anyone around President Trump who is willing to point that out or to call it out or to tell him to back off a bit. Because we don't hear those voices. Well, if you look, I mean, there was a letter sent by seven senators, both Republicans and Democrats, making exactly this case that this should not be happening. And in fact, it's a violation of a law passed in 2022 that makes it illegal to bring Russian oil or gas into the United States. So apart from the sanctions laws, there's a separate one on oil and gas imports from Russia, which they say this is a violation of. And as I say, that's Republican senators as well as Democrats signing on to it. So it is out there. And I think as the news of what we just saw with Starlink, as well as the diesel purchase trickles through the system, you're going to see more and more of this can i just ask you this why is it whenever there's a choice on which side to fall donald trump always falls on the side of vladimir putin do you have a theory an explanation i was at a dinner in warsaw last night and that was one of the topics of conversation and i think people rolled out five or six different theories the one that seems to be the most direct realistic is that he believes that Putin is powerful. And so therefore, if you want to have an end to the war, if you want to get a peace agreement, if you want this to stop, you have to deal with Putin, you have to placate Putin. I think that is misguided. I think that Putin is much weaker than it appears. And I think it is devoid of any moral case about Ukrainians defending themselves and their freedom against external aggression, much the way any other country would if they were attacked. So I think that may be the most simple and direct explanation, but I'm not sure even that holds water. The other explanation, I think, is that, as we've seen, President Trump and his envoys are interested in doing business deals with Russia, perhaps very lucrative business deals, and I don't think they want to lose that opportunity by positioning the United States in a confrontation with Russia. Do you think Trump could lose the war for Ukraine? No, I don't. I honestly don't see how Putin can win this war. He is failing militarily. He is failing financially. Everyone in Russia knows that this war is a failure. You can see it in the skies. You can see it, you know, fire burning on the water outside Sochi. Everybody knows this is a problem. And the Ukrainians can't stop and give up because they're defending their lives, their families, their homes, their lands. The Ukrainians are going to keep fighting and defend Ukraine. And Putin's not going to be able to defeat that. Kurt Volker, really good to have you on today. Thank you so much. Thank you very much. My pleasure. Thanks. And we should just say whilst we've been chatting to Kurt Volker there, the Kremlin has been in touch. Well, hang on. The Kremlin has been in touch with the news agents. Dmitry Peskov has rung up the news agents. It's like, wait, I'm talking to Kurt. No, the Kremlin have put out a statement saying the Provisions of a Russia-Ukraine energy ceasefire have not been established and contacts continue. This is Dmitry Peskov, who said, has anything been specified in concrete terms? He was asked this. No. And that's why work in this area is continuing. Work in this area, meaning bombing the hell out of, is continuing. And Donald Trump claiming at the weekend without any basis whatsoever that there had been a ceasefire agreed on energy infrastructure. It's all made up. all made up, yet Ukraine obviously has to get the blame. Now time to thank our partner HSBC UK. So what actually makes a bank account premier? Well, an HSBC premier account gives you exclusive access to plenty of perks that make you feel extra special, including offers and rewards across travel, dining, shopping and experiences. That sounds great, but I'm particularly intrigued by the experiences bit yeah through premier lifestyle customers can now enjoy priority access and exclusive ticket allocations for major music tours sports events and theater productions nice so it's not just about what your bank account does for your money it's about the extras it can do for you too exactly everything's premier when your bank account is search hsbc premier at hsbc uk you're backed by the current account switch guarantee the leader of the opposition has made it crystal clear about doing deals with other parties so will the prime minister make it equally clear following the green party's descent into the most abhorrent anti-semitism that we will rule out cooperating with them Mr Speaker, can I condemn the motion that was passed unequivocally? It is wrong, it is anti-Semitic and this side of the House will have nothing to do with it and we will always take the right response when it comes to any partnerships we have with other parties. We cannot support a partnership with a party that holds a position that has recently been adopted. So that was Harriet Baldwin, the Conservative MP, asking him if he would rule out a pact. And I heard that statement in the Commons, but I'm now looking at it written down. I think it's actually slightly more subtle than on first reading. We cannot support a partnership with a party that holds a position that has recently been adopted. So I don't think he is entirely saying I would never work with the Greens. I think he's saying the Green Party has got to change before I would. And that particular amendment, resolution, motion, whatever, would have to be dropped, which is, to be fair, where Zak Polanski eventually ended up. Right. Do you think he's? No, I think it was clearer than that. I think that it was saying that, you know, the Green Party has become an anti-Semitic party and at the moment we can't work with them. And I think that this has been a cataclysmically bad couple of weeks for the Green Party, where, you know, we were at their conference the other week and they passed that Zionism is racism motion with kind of so many, you know, overtones that people found abhorrent. And there's no doubt that, you know, far the far left have infiltrated the Green Party. Pro-Palestine activists have, you know, infiltrated the Green Party and essentially taken it over. And that was Andy Burnham saying until they the Green Party comes back to more what we kind of traditionally associate as the Green Party, then there is no deal on the table. And I think it's interesting as well that some of the polling that's coming out about the standing of the Green Party now. I mean, it really has taken a nosedive, not just in terms of headline, how many people would vote green, but also in terms of Zak Polanski himself. Yeah, I do think we've had an interesting couple of weeks, actually, in terms of the realignment of UK politics since the conference speeches. You heard Kemi Badenoch very clearly rule out any alliance with reform. And she, in essence, called them, the leaders at least, racist. She talked about her family. We discussed that on the show this time last week. And now we've heard Andy Burnham, for pretty much the same reasons, say they're racist or they're anti-Semitic. I don't want to deal with the Greens. And if I run you through where Luke Thirlwall for More in Commons polling is today, it is quite interesting. He's got Labour now on 28 percent, Conservatives on 24 percent. So they're up plus three and reform down three on twenty one. The Lib Dems come in at eleven and the Greens are on seven, which is, I think, the lowest they've been for a long time. And what you essentially have is more than 50 percent of the vote now goes to the two main parties. So having spent this entire year, maybe entire two years talking about the multi-party system and obviously, you know, we're nowhere near an election. we're nowhere near the sort of end of the parliamentary cycle these things can change very quickly but we are starting to look it feels like the resurgence of a right and a left a blue and a red you know the the the extremes of both reform and greens are starting to diminish in salience at the moment in these polls yeah i mean look it's not a resurgence of the two main parties Because if you go back to the 2024 general election, that was the lowest vote share for Conservatives and Labour since the two main parties came into being. They got 55 percent of the vote in 2024 and the other parties did very well. But compared to a year ago, it does seem to be a resurgence of Tory and Labour. And I think that the sort of stuff on the Green Party today and what Andy Burnham is saying is interesting. It's interesting for two reasons. I mean, one, because, you know, look, Labour have just won the Holborn and St Pancras by-election, which has given them a big fillip. I think the other thing, though, that cuts against what Andy Burnham is saying is, look, you can't make a speech at the party conference and say, I'm open to electoral reform and we need to change the voting system and start ruling out partners before an election has taken place. The whole point about electoral reform, maybe a more proportional system of government, is that you end up forming coalitions with people. And so I do take with a pinch of salt what Kemi Badenoch says about not doing a deal with reform. I mean, of course, she's going to say that now. But if she got 270 seats and reform had 80 and could get her over the line, is she going to say no to that? and likewise if Labour finds itself in a position where it's the biggest single party but it can form a majority if it does a deal with the Greens and the Liberal Democrats is it going to say no to that either yeah i mean there is an irony about him talking about electoral reform right now because actually what you can see what you can start to see is Labour eating the lunch of some of the other progressive parties. In other words, the more he talks about rejoin or proximity to the EU or reopening the Brexit debate, the less the Lib Dems, frankly, have got to offer. You know, that has been their rallying cry to Remainers, to all the people who thought Brexit had been forgotten, to all the people who, you know, felt very frustrated that Starmer wasn't reopening that debate. Andy Burnham's gone, yeah, no, we can have it now. And so I think that the Lib Dems are in a slightly existential kind of place where they're trying to redefine what they now stand for. The Greens are sort of faced with being this sort of slightly cranky party, which is talking about, you know, Zionism as racism, and they're not really talking about, you know, clean water or clean energy or any of the things that people originally joined the Greens to talk about. And Andy Burnham's talking about care. Andy Burnham's talking about social reform. You know, the stuff that actually the progressives have sort of gone to their various parties for. And so at the moment, he shouldn't. I mean, it's a weird time, actually, to be talking about electoral reform. It almost belongs to a time when Labour wasn't doing quite well from first past the post. They've now got 407 MPs on it, you know. Well, yeah, you go back to before the 1997 election and you had Tony Blair talking about electoral reform being great mates with Paddy Ashdown. yeah he wins a thumping majority that's sorry paddy sorry paddy yeah nice idea we're not going to need that now so forget it i think what's interesting about i mean i i think i said it on the podcast last week that i'd spoken to a tory strategist who said to me that he listened to andy burnham's party conference speech and thought that was the start of coalition negotiations with the liberal democrats i think you're right i don't think it's that i think he's trying to eat their lunch i think you know what is the point of the liberal democrats now i mean now there is now the Lib Dems have got 72 MPs right but if you imagine a world in which all the things that you want the Lib Dems to do are already being done by the party in power who also wield the power are they going to stick to that number? And so many of those Liberal Democrat seats are ones which Conservatives previously held and we were discussing on the podcast yesterday when we had John Glenn on you know Kemi Badenoch's a kind of right-hand person and him saying yeah look we are You know, we are targeting those seats. And Kemi Badenoch has, you know, has set out a conference speech, which looks like it's going after those Liberal Democrat seats in the South East. I mean, the Lib Dems say no. Interestingly, I've heard from the Lib Dems since her speech and they've said, I don't think she's not going to win back Lib Dems with that kind of speech. Yeah, everyone likes a few tax cuts, but actually absolutely shutting the door on EU staff is is not great for them. And I don't I don't know. I mean, the Lib Dems think that they are not in danger of losing seats to the Conservatives, but I think they would concede that they are in danger of losing seats to a Burnham Labour government. But the important point is, and we haven't discussed this on the podcast at all, is that there are Liberal Democrats asking about whether the Liberal Democrat leadership is right to face the challenge now from Burnham and from Badenoch and there have been rumblings about Ed Davey's leadership and there are a couple of front benchers who have resigned and you know there was a kind of forcing at the issue now it looks like Ed Davey is safe for now as Liberal Democrat leader but there are rumblings within his own party about whether the Liberal Democrats are going in the right direction and providing the right kind of message that is getting through to the British people. Yeah I mean that's that's the thing isn't it you can't actually stand still in politics and famously in 2024 Ed Davey didn't stand still at all you know he was sleeping on things and off things and under things and all over the place and getting very wet getting very wet and i mean it does make us sound incredibly childish as an electorate doesn't it but essentially if you stop kind of dominating the news or the narrative a bit then people kind of go well what have you done what's going on you're fighting for attention yeah you are fighting for attention and it feels that since the you know general election Ed Davey has been losing that fight for attention and people are saying well so what's the point of the Liberal Democrats now and i think that that's the question they need to answer so you know interesting realignments sort of taking place and not taking place simultaneously we talk a lot on the podcast about senate races and races for the house of representatives and it can sometimes can be a bit bewildering we're going to take you now to a race for just a council seat somewhere in america in flyover america in indiana and what has this got to do with the price of peas well absolutely bugger all apart from it if elected a woman candidate a democrat goes on television except she is utterly sloshed okay and our last question of the night is if elected what is one decision that you expect to make that may be unpopular with some voters but you believe ultimately would be in the best interest of Fayette County oh i wouldn't raise your taxes um what is the one decision that i would make hmm repeat that again what is the one decision that i would make that might not be popular right that may be unpopular with some voters some voters but is in the best interest of the county firing all republicans i wouldn't let them i mean i don't even talk to them i don't like them i mean they voted against our own state representative voted against her own party i mean what do you want me to say i don't like being around them i mean y'all did this to us you all voted for us you made this happen this ice coming into our communities stealing people's jobs i mean she said essentially she'd fire all republicans and then she goes on to sort of call all MAGA's racist and unintelligent and say that she was threatened with her life by a sheriff's nephew I liked her final message which was ask for a final message to voters, we've got guns too it's what we call unfiltered I think this is what we call unfiltered and you know people are always saying we just want politicians to speak their mind, stop being political in their answers, just tell us what you really think Guess what she did. So if that's what you like in your politics and you've got a vote in Fayette County Council in Indiana, Jamie West is your candidate. Bye for now. We'll be back tomorrow. The News Agents. This has been a global production.