Ukraine’s presidential advisor accused Elon Musk of committing an “evil act” for allegedly turning off his Starlink satellite internet network near the Crimean coast when Ukraine needed to use the network to direct a drone attack on Russian naval assets.
The details come from a soon-to-be-released biography on Musk by Walter Isaacson, which alleges that Ukrainian drones approaching their Russian targets “lost connectivity and washed ashore harmlessly” when Musk ordered his engineers to turn off the Starlink system near their targets on the Crimean coast, reported CNN.
The Dallas Express reported at the time that when Russia initially invaded Ukraine in February 2022, Musk had announced he would make SpaceX’s Starlink satellite system available to Ukraine since Russian air strikes had destroyed ground-based cellular phone and internet networks.
According to CNN, which reported on excerpts from the biography, Musk said that Ukraine was dragging him into the war by demanding that Starlink be made available for offensive purposes.
“How am I in this war?” Musk reportedly asked Isaacson, per CNN. “Starlink was not meant to be involved in wars. It was so people can watch Netflix and chill and get online for school and do good peaceful things, not drone strikes.”
Ukrainian politician and presidential advisor Mykhailo Podolyak took to X to claim that Ukrainian civilians died from missiles that would have otherwise been destroyed had Musk not interfered.
“Sometimes a mistake is much more than just a mistake. By not allowing Ukrainian drones to destroy part of the Russian military … fleet via [Starlink] interference, [Elon Musk] allowed this fleet to fire Kalibr missiles at Ukrainian cities. As a result, civilians, children are being killed. This is the price of a cocktail of ignorance and big ego,” he claimed.
Podolyak then implied that Musk held Russian sympathies, which he called evil.
“However, the question still remains: why do some people so desperately want to defend war criminals and their desire to commit murder? And do they now realize that they are committing evil and encouraging evil?” he wrote.
Musk took to X to dispute the event, as reported by CNN. In a reply to a tweet that praised Musk for possibly averting a nuclear war by not succumbing to Ukrainian pressure and turning off Starlink, Musk claimed that the details circulating in the press were not accurate and that Starlink was never active over in Crimea.
“The Starlink regions in question were not activated. SpaceX did not deactivate anything,” he claimed.
Musk then explained his version of events:
“There was an emergency request from government authorities to activate Starlink all the way to Sevastopol [the largest city in Crimea]. The obvious intent being to sink most of the Russian fleet at anchor. If I had agreed to their request, then SpaceX would be explicitly complicit in a major act of war and conflict escalation.”
Musk also called for a return to diplomacy, stating, “Both sides should agree to a truce. Every day that passes, more Ukrainian and Russian youth die to gain and lose small pieces of land, with borders barely changing. This is not worth their lives.”
While the exact details of Elon Musk’s involvement in the success or failure of Ukraine’s military operations against Russia are disputed, the episode elicited multiple comments from individuals praising Musk for allegedly averting nuclear war. Others condemned Musk, calling for him to be stripped of control over Starlink.
Peter Strzok, the former deputy assistant director of the FBI who was fired for texts that showed bias against then-President Trump, posted the Starlink allegation in the CNN article with the comment, “Remind me how much of the US national security space lift relies on this man’s company?”
Former George Bush speechwriter David Frum, appearing on BBC Newsnight, said, “What Musk did, was first, unpatriotic … the question now will be raised should Starlink be nationalized?”