Billionaire Elon Musk has refused to reply Sky News questions on claims he foiled a Ukrainian assault on Russian warships.

The businessman behind SpaceX and X, previously often called Twitter, has been accused of enabling Vladimir Putin by withholding the use of his satellite network.

Ukrainian navy forces deliberate to make use of the Starlink satellites for a drone assault on a Russian naval base final September, however Musk would not enable it.

War stakes ‘raised’ by Crimea attack – latest updates

Ukraine has relied closely on the Starlink community, owned by the billionaire, since Russia’s 2022 invasion.

Details of permission being withheld have emerged in a brand new biography of Musk.

The Russian vessels in query had been stationed at Sevastopol in Crimea, the Ukrainian territory annexed by the Russians in 2014.

Musk had posted on X: “If I had agreed to their request, then SpaceX would be explicitly complicit in a major act of war and conflict escalation.”

A senior Ukrainian struggle official has accused him of inflicting the deaths of civilians by denying entry to his satellites.

Mykhailo Podolyak, a senior adviser to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, tweeted: “Civilians, children are being killed. This is the price of a cocktail of ignorance and big ego.”

Sky News requested Musk in regards to the Ukrainian’s remarks after he had attended a gathering on the Federal Aviation Authority in Washington DC.

He declined to reply when requested if his ignorance and ego had price Ukrainian lives.

Nor did he reply when requested if he appreciated the outline of him by Mr Putin as “outstanding”.

Musk had earlier attended a gathering on Capitol Hill with US senators.

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World ‘nowhere close’ to existential AI threat

He pulled up in a Tesla, after all he did.

Musk arrived on-brand, squeezed along with his safety element into the again seat of a Tesla car, as offered by the person himself.

It was the advertising necessity (his arrival was filmed by the world’s media) that contrasted him with platinum-class contemporaries.

Size mattered extra to the likes of Mark Zuckerberg as they rolled in presidential-style SUVs in the direction of a convention within the coronary heart of DC.

And they had been all there – the visitor checklist learn like a Who’s Who in synthetic intelligence (AI), gathering to be quizzed on the place their know-how may take our world.

It was a closed-door assembly with US senators gathered round a U-shaped desk.

For the tech billionaires, there have been questions from the media on their manner into the constructing however little got here again, save for the faint whiff of perfume from a procession of the expensively underdressed.

Their interior ideas had been clearly reserved for the politicians probing AI, its advantages, risks and requisite protections.

Together, the tech giants behind Microsoft, Meta, X et al maintain appreciable energy over the longer term and, after all, their affect stretches far within the current.

On the day, we did not hear the most recent ideas of Musk on the controversy embroiling him and Ukraine.

Maybe the politicians trying into synthetic intelligence, its energy and attain, had higher luck?

Even in the event that they did not, even in silence, the encircling noise makes one factor abundantly clear.

The capacity of AI and its proprietor to form armed battle displays its energy to alter the foundations of engagement – on the battlefield and much past.