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Volodymyr Zelenskyy has awarded Elon Musk one of Ukraine’s highest state honours, as Kyiv tries to secure the tech billionaire’s consent to use Starlink-equipped drones for strikes deep inside Russia.
In a decree issued on Wednesday, Zelenskyy conferred Musk the Order of Freedom for “outstanding personal contributions to the protection of human life and freedom, and to the development of relations between the peoples of Ukraine and the United States of America”.
The decision comes as Kyiv and Washington have been at odds over the use of Musk’s Starlink satellite communications service inside Russia, which would give Ukrainian drones a stronger connection and a better chance of evading Russian electronic jamming.
Zelenskyy said last week that Musk regarded extending Starlink coverage there as a “major escalation” and had so far refused to authorise it. “All of this is in the hands of the US president, and they are already having their own internal discussions,” Zelenskyy said.
The Ukrainian leader asked Musk to authorise use of Starlink up to 200km inside Russia, a range that would allow Kyiv to target ballistic missile launchers, people familiar with the matter told the FT.
Ukraine continues to target Russian infrastructure well beyond the front line. Zelenskyy said on Wednesday its forces had hit 16 targets deep in Russian territory, including several oil facilities.
Starlink’s flat, tripod-mounted dishes have long been a ubiquitous sight at Ukrainian frontline positions. They provide high-speed internet even to soldiers in isolated dugouts and connect battlefield command posts to banks of monitors showing live drone feeds.
Mounted on drones, Starlink terminals have also been instrumental in Ukraine’s “middle strike” campaign this spring and summer, in which Ukrainian drones targeted logistical routes into Crimea and military bases on the Ukrainian peninsula annexed by Russia.
Efforts to convince Musk to let Ukraine use Starlink over Russian territory may also have been hampered by the July departure of defence minister Mykhailo Fedorov, who had cultivated a close relationship with the billionaire.
Soon after his appointment in January, Fedorov pushed to block Russia’s use of smuggled Starlink terminals on the front line, including on some long-range drones. Military analysts said the move helped slow Russian advances.
Meanwhile, Kyiv has embarked on a diplomatic push to secure new deliveries of interceptors for the US-made Patriot air-defence system.
A dire shortage of US-made interceptors capable of shooting down Russian ballistic missiles has coincided in recent months with a sharp increase in Russian drone and missile strikes on major Ukrainian cities.
Zelenskyy said Ukrainian forces were also attempting to strike the launchers used to fire ballistic missiles — an approach that would be easier with Starlink-equipped drones. The president said his forces had recently managed to destroy one such launcher near the Ukrainian border.
“In other words, when our supply of anti-ballistic missiles is limited, there is another tactic. It is more difficult, and we developed it ourselves: hunting down the nearby sites from which ballistic missiles are launched,” he said.
