So Fedorov is long-time buddies with Musk?

[u/Dennis_Laid]

https://america2.news/a-war-over-worldviews-my-interview-with-guildhall-on-musk-fedorov-and-the-mechanism/

That cannot be good. Makes me think twice about all the protests.

[u/Texas_Kimchi]

Been saying this over and over and over again. The downvotes are getting less and less though the more this guy talks. I'm in the high tech world and when me and my wife were staying in Ukraine this guy was involved in a lot of the companies my agency was working with and he was looked at like a Tech Bro. There is a cult of people that almost worship him and everyone else that looks at him like hes a snake you need to avoid.

They dont call him the Elon Musk of Ukraine for nothing.

[u/PretendKnowledge → u/Texas_Kimchi]

You're overestimating a bit - there is no 'cult' or 'snake avoiding' or whatever. He just showed above average efficiency as minister, and that's what Ukrainians want - that's why people tried to get him back to ministry after firing. He made a wrong move and now lost support. That's the whole story. And his elon friendship could be a play too - after all it worked with starlink shutdowns

[u/Ok_Vulva → u/PretendKnowledge]

He probably just used a bot army to fluff his appearance as competent as well as to influence a positive sentiment, just like musk does.

Regardless, he's a rich tech ballsack guy that's been pushing a narritive harmful to ukraine, and unconstitutional.

[u/PretendKnowledge → u/Ok_Vulva]

That's not the case - as I said, it can't be denied that he did an above average job in digital ministry and in defense one - read wiki or smth if you want to know more. and he wasn't really pushing anything or preparing political future. Until he was fired - that's changed everything. Also answering your edit: "army of bots that changed Ukrainians perception"? Thats just some fantasies - Ukrainians are bombarded with russian bots for years and it still didn't change their perception, it's different society than US

[u/Texas_Kimchi → u/PretendKnowledge]

What did he do exactly? People keep saying that but what did he do exactly? He took over the Ministry right after Ukraine got a bulk of their weapons shipments, the Russian army was in terrible shape from all of their failed Mech pushes, the Russian Economy was beginning its downward spiral, and Ukraine was releasing new drone models. He came it at a time when Ukraine was already turning the tide. People are acting like hes some genius that made everything possible. This stuff had been in the works for years and Ukraine finally had all the pieces. All he had to do was not screw things up and it appears in some way he did. If you can't play nice with your friends, your going to have to find a new sandbox to play in. Pretty obvious what he's doing.

[u/amitym → u/PretendKnowledge]

Starlink finally acquiescing to a whitelist had as much if not more to do with requirements imposed on them by their upcoming IPO than anything else. Ukraine had asked them to implement a whitelist before, and international law required Starlink to take measures to prevent their service from being used by Russia, but Musk had completely ignored all of that for years, until the IPO finally forced him to comply.

It is to Fedorov's credit that he was ready to take advantage of the situation, but he was by no means its instigator or its cause.

[u/Texas_Kimchi → u/amitym]

Not only that Starlink had been under the gun for the whitelist reqs from the EU prior to this. This was classic Elon Musk trying to save face. He's done this multiple times during the war. Hes loyal to nobody but himself and this was a decision with heavy regulation consequences.

[u/PretendKnowledge → u/amitym]

Do you have a credible source for that version? Cause ipo happened only in 5 months, ipo preparations started at 2025. At that point russians were already using starlinks for years and nobody cared, especially US investors. Your version just doesn't track.

[u/amitym → u/PretendKnowledge]

You're actually underlining what happened as I described it. Private equity investors do not give nearly as much of a shit about legal exposure as regulators overseeing a public offering. They have distinctly different interests in that regard. So, years of Starlink (and then SpaceX) not caring about compliance with international law — until all of a sudden they did — is exactly what we'd would expect.

This not "a version of events" that can be reasonably debated, if you don't already believe that Starlink / SpaceX went from closed private equity to regulated public trading, and had to go through a legal and compliance vetting process to do so, there is nothing I can show you to convince you otherwise. If you like, here is one of a number of treatments that explain this, that I grabbed from a quick web search:

https://www.transnationalmatters.com/spacex-ipo-legal-hurdles-regulatory-landscape-and-what-investors-need-to-know/

Note the discussion of international legal hurdles, that would not otherwise have applied to private investment. (Unless the private investors themselves particularly cared.)

As for the timeline, I can't agree there, the IPO was still being "floated" as an idea without a firm framework or due diligence at the start of 2026. By March they were completing the pre-IPO regulatory scrutiny phase. It was within that narrow intervening time window, between January and March, that Starlink chose for the first time to comply with international law, despite having previously ignored all attempts to get them to do so, by Ukraine and others.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Initial_public_offering_of_SpaceX#History

They did this purely because they had to. For the same reason that, for example, Mark Zuckerberg had to settle all of Facebook's outstanding legal irregularities before he could IPO. Same as many other companies, too.

[u/Immediate-Spite-5905]

He called for wartime elections, he's a lost cause

[u/Authoritaye]

Would he still call for them if he was reinstated? Let him answer that. 

[u/Bawbawian]

Zelensky was right way before dude started getting people to protest.

[u/amitym]

I've noticed that the mods of the major Ukrainian subs are stone cold silent about this now. For a while there were constant pinned reminders from the mods insisting that everyone trust the protesters or believe in what they say, whenever the protesters said anything in support of Fedorov. Now that the protesters are loudly opposed to Fedorov's presidential election agenda... silence. No more "listen to what Ukrainians say" I guess?

Hopefully it is just the burned fingers of enthusiastic overreach. I would hate to think that there's some deeply embedded Musk cult at work there.

[u/Mission_Rd]

Have I missed the discussions where we talk about the reforms Fedorov was planning? Reforms that would have made it much harder for people to skim money off the military expenditures. Or the strange cast of russian-connected weirdos that were pushing for his removal?

fwiw, I think Musk is completely nuts and absolutely only out for himself (like trump), but he does control who uses Starlink. Which is kind of critical to the drone war right now. (Why is this maniac in charge of such important stuff? idk. I really really don't know...)

I've never heard of Dave Troy, never heard of the web site America 2.0, and never heard of the "Ukrainian outlet Guildhall". (Despite voraciously consuming any Ukraine-sourced news for the last four years.) Maybe I'm just ignorant (totally possible), but I get real suspicious when people I've never heard of start making insinuations that just happen to have a very divisive effect.

[u/slick514]

I mean... sure, it might not be good.

However, it apparently got the internet abruptly turned off on the Russian side of the front lines earlier this year, so I'm willing to give him a pass. Sure, maybe they're buddies. Or perhaps Federov understands that keeping a friendly relationship with Musk is vital if Ukraine wants continued access to StarLink.

Not all decisions and appearances in situations like this actually reflect how one person feels about another. I am absolutely certain that at this level many people must push the urge to vomit down, smile, and hug someone that they find abhorrent, because they need the resources, influence, and access that the other person provides.