SpaceX CEO Elon Musk donated some 20,000 Starlink terminals to Ukraine shortly after Russia launched its offensive against the country in February 2022. Ukrainian troops are using them to operate drones along the front line. However, the billionaire said last year that he had refused Ukraine’s request to activate the Starlink service in Crimea.

Speaking to reporters on Monday, Peskov noted that Starlink had never been certified in Russia, meaning that it “cannot be and is not being delivered here officially”. He added that, for this reason, the technology cannot be used in any official capacity in Russia.

The Kremlin’s representative concluded by saying that there was no point in Moscow getting involved in a “discussion between the Kiev regime and entrepreneur Musk”.

In a post on X (formerly Twitter) on Sunday, Musk lamented that “a number of false news reports claim that SpaceX is selling Starlink terminals to Russia”.

“To the best of our knowledge, no Starlinks have been sold directly or indirectly to Russia,” the SpaceX CEO added.

In a separate statement on Thursday, SpaceX insisted that it “does not do business of any kind with the Russian government or its military,” and has “never sold or marketed Starlink in Russia, nor has it shipped equipment to locations in Russia”.

Meanwhile, on Sunday, Ukraine’s Main Directorate of Intelligence (GUR) claimed to have intercepted a conversation between Russian military personnel, where one service member could be heard saying in Russian “Starlink is working, we have internet [access]”.

GUR spokesman Andrey Yusov alleged that Russian troops are “systematically” using Starlink terminals.

In September, Musk said his company had refused to enable Starlink coverage over Crimea.

“Now, the reason it was turned off was actually because… the United States has sanctions against Russia… and that includes Crimea,” he explained at the time. In the absence of any direct orders from the US leadership, SpaceX opted not to run afoul of the regulations despite Kiev’s request to do so, the entrepreneur noted.

Earlier, CNN reported that Musk’s decision had thwarted a Ukrainian drone attack against the Russian Black Sea Fleet.

The EU and the US moved to freeze an estimated $300 billion in assets belonging to the Russian Central Bank, most of which are held by the Brussels-based clearinghouse Euroclear, in February 2022.

On Monday, the European Council ordered all depositors holding €1 million ($1.08 million) or more in Russian Central Bank assets to keep separate accounts of “extraordinary cash balances accumulating due to EU restrictive measures” and prohibited them from disposing of any interest or profits from the frozen assets.

“This decision paves the way for the Council to decide on a possible establishment of a financial contribution to the EU budget raised on these net profits to support Ukraine and its recovery and reconstruction at a later stage,” the Council said in a statement.

Moscow has protested the US and EU sanctions as illegal, adding that any attempt to outright seize the Russian funds would be declared theft and receive a response in kind. Russian bankers have also warned that such a step would destroy the confidence of the rest of the world in the rule of law in the West and trigger a run on European and US banks because they would no longer be considered safe.

While the US has been the most outspoken advocate of confiscating the frozen funds to send to Ukraine, the EU stands to lose the most from Moscow’s potential retaliation against such a step. Euroclear alone accounts for €196.6 billion ($211 billion) in frozen Russian assets, and it has accrued nearly €4.4 billion in interest over the past year.

The EU’s “invention of openly fraudulent schemes for the seizure of income from Russian assets is dictated by the need to create the illusion of legitimacy over attacks on our property and thereby camouflage what is in fact an outright theft”, the Russian Foreign Ministry announced over the weekend, responding to reports that Brussels would move to seize the interest.

Some EU members have likewise been skeptical of the confiscation proposal.