The plot thickens, as they say. 

A week ago on Friday, the Trump administration made a surprise announcement that the U.S. was making a deal to allow Russia to sell diesel fuel on the world market. That deal will help fund Putin's war machine at a time when Putin is already under a lot of stress. 

But in addition to providing Putin a financial lifeline, U.S. officials also reportedly demanded that Ukraine stop attacking Russian refineries or else. The or else was implied but involved Ukrainian access to U.S. intel. 

The Americans added a firm request from Mr. Trump: that Ukraine stop attacking Russian oil refineries.

One of the Ukrainians asked what they would get in return.

The Americans responded that the United States was doing a lot for Ukraine already, according to three people familiar with the meeting, and should not have to make a trade for Ukraine to stop its refinery attacks. The Americans then mentioned U.S. intelligence assistance, considered vital to the Ukrainian war effort.

If you've followed this story you know that Ukraine's refinery attacks have really changed the course of the war, more than anything else over the past year. So asking them to stop those attacks is really asking them to stop winning.

A few days later we learned that Ukraine's access to Starshield, which is the U.S. government's separate version of Starlink, was throttled. Ukraine has actual contracts with the U.S. government for the use of Starshield but, from what I've read, we're paying for that access. What happened this week is that one night a bunch of Ukraine's hardware, including the very fast drones they use to intercept Russian drone attacks stopped working. That's because someone had set a new limit on the top speed of any object using the service, down to 100 kph. That's about a third of the top speed of Ukraine's interceptor drones.

Ukraine said on Tuesday that some military operations had been jeopardized, and specifically cited restrictions on Starshield.

“Our armed forces did not receive a warning about these restrictions, and this led to the failure of a number of missions,” Serhiy Beskrestnov, who advises President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine on weapons technologies, wrote on social media.

Mr. Beskrestnov said that the restrictions, which applied to devices traveling over 100 miles per hour and using Starshield, was related to “the current political situation.”

The fact that this was done without even talking to Ukraine in advance seems pretty inexcusable. Ukraine is fighting a war. Having hardware suddenly fail unexpectedly could (and probably did) result in people being killed.

By the next day as people were wondering what had happened, some improvement in the service resumed though still not at full speed. At the same time on Wednesday, Elon Musk put out a tweet saying the limits on Starshield were set by the U.S. government, not by him.

Starshield systems are owned and controlled by the US government. Any limits on speed or usage are decided by the US military and ultimately POTUS. Starlink is a commercial service owned and controlled by SpaceX. Usage of Starlink is limited to civilian or defensive activities and cannot be used for offensive military action, as doing so would be inappropriate for a commercial company.

This seemed to be his way of saying that President Trump had made the call, because Trump would be ultimately responsible for Starshield. But then yesterday, President Trump was asked directly if he'd given the order and he said that a) Starshield was working as it always had and b) he didn't order it cut.

Reporter: “If it wasn’t you, then who gave the order for Starlink to go down in Ukraine ?” Trump: “I don’t know.” https://t.co/YiLKYTbN9o

The service definitely was throttled overnight and into Wednesday morning. If Musk didn't do it and Trump didn't do it, who does that leave? According to a story published yesterday by the Telegraph, the idea to cut the maximum speed for use of Starshield came from Musk but Trump agreed.

The billionaire tech entrepreneur approached the US president with the proposal to introduce speed limits on the system, which hampered Ukraine’s drone defences, according to four sources familiar with the discussions.

One of the sources said Mr Trump “agreed” with Mr Musk’s suggestion, paving the way for the Pentagon to execute the slowdown on Starshield, the military-grade version of the satellite communications system...

On Wednesday, Mr Musk denied he was responsible for limiting Starlink access, blaming the White House. He claimed that “any limits on speed or usage” were “decided by the US military and ultimately POTUS”, referring to Mr Trump.

However, after what was described as a “night of carnage” in Kyiv because of the blackout, a senior source said Mr Musk had been alarmed about the possibility of adverse consumer reaction in Europe.

The source said: “He tweeted out that he was innocent and that it was the US administration that did it. The reality is that they were both in it.”

If Trump wants to stop intel sharing and support for Ukraine and instead hand Russia an economic lifeline, he can do that. But there's no reason to make it a surprise and risk a bunch of people we have a written contract with being killed in the process. If you want to change policy, you let them know in advance that our support is going to end and give them some time to prepare for that.

As for Elon Musk, he has been a huge help to Ukraine's war effort over a long period of time at this point. He gave Ukraine a huge boost this year when he cut off access to Starlink from Russian territory. This, more than anything, is why the Russian effort on the front lines has completely stalled this year. So if we're keeping track of Musk's decisions vis a vis Ukraine, he's been far more helpful than this one bad decision suggests. Making him out to be a villain here isn't remotely fair to him. He's done more for Ukraine at this point than almost any single person on earth.

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