Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite service is the backbone of the Ukrainian military’s drone attacks. Now the entrepreneur claims to have stood in the way of an attack on the Russian Black Sea Fleet.
Tech billionaire Elon Musk says he prevented a Ukrainian attack on the Russian Black Sea Fleet in the port city of Sevastopol. Musk wrote on his online platform X (formerly Twitter) that he rejected a request from the Ukrainian government to activate his company SpaceX’s Starlink satellite communications system in the region.
“Their apparent intention was to sink most of the anchored fleet,” he wrote. SpaceX would have been involved in a major act of war and escalation, Musk explained his decision.
Musk denies intentional shutdown
Musk made the comments after publishing an excerpt from the upcoming biography of the tech entrepreneur in the Washington Post. There, biographer Walter Isaacson reports, based on conversations with Musk, that last September Ukraine “attempted a surprise attack on the Russian naval fleet stationed in Sevastopol in Crimea by sending six small underwater drones loaded with explosives.” For this attack, the military wanted to use Starlink to guide the drones to the target.
Isaacson alleges in the book that Musk secretly instructed SpaceX employees in September 2022 to turn off Starlink coverage within a 100-kilometer radius of the Crimean coast so that the underwater drones could not reach their destination. Musk contradicted this representation at X. “The Starlink regions in question were not activated. SpaceX did not deactivate anything,” he wrote.
According to biographer Isaacson, the Ukrainian military is said to have carried out the attack anyway. “When the underwater drones came close to the Russian fleet in Sevastopol, they lost communication,” the Washington Post excerpt said. The drones were said to have veered off course and landed on the bank.
Ambassador is said to have threatened counterattack
The news channel CNN also reported on the incident based on the biography. The motive behind it is Musk’s fear of a nuclear escalation of the war, the broadcaster quotes from the biography. For example, the billionaire had talks with the Russian ambassador to the United States, who specifically told him “that a Ukrainian drone attack on Crimea would lead to a nuclear response.”
Musk is the boss and large shareholder of the space company SpaceX, which operates the Starlink system for internet connections from space. After the Russian attack on Ukraine in February, SpaceX provided Ukraine with numerous Starlink terminals and did not charge any fees for their operation.
They played a key role in ensuring that the country was able to coordinate its defense while the Russian military targeted its communications infrastructure. Over time, however, Musk and SpaceX top manager Gwynne Shotwell became dissatisfied with the fact that Ukraine was using Starlink for offensive combat operations while the company was covering the costs. There is now a contract with the Pentagon, which books Starlink capacities.