8-9-2023 (WASHINGTON) Tech magnate Elon Musk has disclosed that he refused a Ukrainian request to activate Starlink internet access in the Black Sea region near Moscow-annexed Crimea, claiming that this action prevented a potential Ukrainian attack on a Russian naval base last year.
Starlink, the satellite internet service operated by Musk’s SpaceX, has been operational in Ukraine since shortly after the country was invaded by Russia in February 2022.
In a post on X (formerly Twitter), which Musk also owns, he revealed, “There was an emergency request from government authorities to activate Starlink all the way to Sevastopol. The obvious intent being to sink most of the Russian fleet at anchor.”
Sevastopol is the base of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, located on the Crimean peninsula, which was annexed by Moscow in 2014.
Musk added, “If I had agreed to their request, then SpaceX would be explicitly complicit in a major act of war and conflict escalation.”
Musk’s revelation came in response to an excerpt from an upcoming biography of the tech mogul by Walter Isaacson, known for his biography of Steve Jobs. In the published excerpt by The Washington Post, Isaacson mentioned that in September of the previous year, “The Ukrainian military was attempting a sneak attack on the Russian naval fleet based at Sevastopol in Crimea by sending six small drone submarines packed with explosives, and it was using Starlink to guide them to the target.”
Isaacson also noted that Musk had “spoken to the Russian ambassador to the United States … (who) had explicitly told him that a Ukrainian attack on Crimea would lead to a nuclear response.”
Musk, according to Isaacson, “secretly told his engineers to turn off coverage within 100 kilometers of the Crimean coast. As a result, when the Ukrainian drone subs got near the Russian fleet in Sevastopol, they lost connectivity and washed ashore harmlessly.”
However, Musk contested Isaacson’s account, stating, “The Starlink regions in question were not activated. SpaceX did not deactivate anything.”
Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to the Ukrainian president, criticized Musk’s intervention, attributing civilian deaths to it and accusing him of ignorance and arrogance. Podolyak said, “By not allowing Ukrainian drones to destroy part of the Russian fleet via Starlink interference, [Musk] allowed this fleet to fire Kalibr missiles at Ukrainian cities. As a result, civilians, and children are being killed.”
In response to Isaacson’s account, Russia’s former president and senior security official, Dmitry Medvedev, praised Musk. He posted on X, “If what Isaacson has written in his book is true, then it looks like Musk is the last adequate mind in North America. Or, at the very least, in gender-neutral America, he is the one with the balls.”
Musk also used his X account to call for a truce in the ongoing conflict, stating, “Both sides should agree to a truce.
