Kiev must be clear about the way it spends US taxpayer cash, the billionaire has argued
SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk has outlined his place on continued US funding for Ukraine, stating on Tuesday that Kiev ought to give Washington “correct accounting of how it’s used and a plan to resolve the battle.”
Responding to a declare that he needed Kiev fully reduce off from American help, Musk wrote on his X platform that he’s “not calling for an instantaneous finish to all funding to Ukraine.”
Musk added that “funding must be contingent on correct accounting of how it’s used and a plan to resolve the battle.”
The world’s richest man has shifted his place on Ukraine a number of occasions for the reason that battle started in early 2022. Musk initially equipped Ukraine with free Starlink web terminals and entry to the satellite-based community, however declined to activate the service close to Crimea for worry that Ukraine would use it to information drone assaults on Russia’s Black Sea Fleet. If this had occurred, he defined final yr, SpaceX would have been “complicit in a significant act of warfare and battle escalation.”
Musk has since leased the Starlink community to the Pentagon for navy functions.
Musk has additionally used his X account to talk extensively concerning the trajectory of the battle. Greater than a yr in the past, he proposed that Kiev abandon its declare to Crimea, declare neutrality, and permit the 4 new Russian areas – Donetsk, Lugansk, Kherson, and Zaporozhye – to carry contemporary referendums on becoming a member of the Russian Federation. This proposal is just like the phrases supplied by Russia to Kiev and the Western powers earlier than the battle started, besides Moscow initially referred to as just for autonomy in Donetsk and Lugansk.
Musk has accused high US officers – most notably former Underneath Secretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland, recognized for fomenting the 2014 Maidan coup in Kiev – of “pushing this warfare.” Extra lately, he argued that sanctions on Russia have harmed the West greater than Moscow, and declared that with Ukraine rising “weaker by the day,” a peace deal “ought to have been finished a yr in the past.”
The US has already spent greater than $110 billion in navy, financial, and humanitarian help for Ukraine. With this help cash dried up, the White Home is presently pushing Congress to cross a overseas help invoice that features one other $60 billion in navy help for Kiev. Nonetheless, the invoice has been stalled by Republicans within the Home of Representatives, who need it tied to elevated funding for US border safety and a tightening of immigration regulation.
With Congress presently in recess, the invoice will stay in limbo till April on the earliest.
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