Elon Musk's command of the Ukrainian military

The world's richest man has more power than you realize.

SpaceX owner and Tesla CEO Elon Musk poses on the red carpet of the Axel Springer Award 2020 on Dec. 1, 2020 in Berlin, Germany. (Photo illustration by Paul Szoldra, shot by Britta Pedersen-Pool/Getty Images)

THE UKRAINIAN MILITARY IS RELIANT ON STARLINK internet provided by SpaceX. In other words, the world’s richest man has the power to screw up the operations of Europe’s second-largest army at any moment.

How we got to the supremely weird place of Elon Musk controlling Ukraine’s battlefield communications from half a world away is an interesting story.

It goes something like this: Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014, dispatching armed “little green men” from its military to the country’s east without identifying insignia while repeatedly lying to the world about it. Those Russian troops helped shoot down a civilian airliner carrying 298 people and fueled an astroturfed uprising that killed tens of thousands more. By 2015, Russia had illegally annexed Ukraine's Crimean peninsula. Two intern…