Elon Musk admits he prevented the attack on Ukraine by not using satellites

• Elon Musk refused to build Starlink satellites and thwarted Ukraine’s attack on the Russian navy, he said.
• “If I had accepted their request, SpaceX would have been part of a larger war and increased conflict,” he said.
• Starlink satellites are critical in allowing Ukraine to connect to the internet during the attack.

SpaceX chief Elon Musk has admitted that he prevented a Ukrainian drone attack on Russia by refusing to use his Starlink satellites to prevent an escalation of the conflict.

Walter Isaacson’s new biography of Musk, reported by CNN and other US outlets on Thursday, claimed that Musk ordered satellites to be turned off as Ukrainian drones descended on Russian warships in Sevastopol in Crimea.

Musk’s account of events was slightly different, claiming that the satellites had not been activated. However, he refused the request to turn it on.

“There was an urgent request from the government authorities to operate Starlink all the way to Sevastopol. The clear objective is to sink most of the Russian fleet at anchor,” tweeted Musk on Thursday.

“If I had accepted their request, SpaceX would have been part of a larger war and increased conflict.”

As Insider’s Charles R. Davis previously reported, Isaacson’s book describes how Musk unwillingly entered the war in Ukraine after providing Ukraine with free Starlink satellites to maintain internet connectivity in the early days of the Russian invasion.

Satellites soon became an important tool for the Ukrainian military in coordinating drone strikes, battlefield communications, and other military operations.

Musk told Isaacson that he had never intended for satellites to be used in warfare.

“How am I doing in this war?” Musk asked in an interview with Isaacson. “Starlink wasn’t meant to be involved in wars. It was so people could watch Netflix and be cool and get school internet and do good peaceful things, not drone strikes.”

According to excerpts, when Musk learned in the first weeks of the war that Starlink satellites were being used for the Sevastopol strike, he spoke on the phone to the Russian ambassador to the US who told him that the attack would trigger a nuclear response from Russia. .

With the drones about 60 miles off the coast of Crimea, he ordered Starlink engineers to turn off the satellites meaning the mission was effectively destroyed and the drones washed ashore “without incident.”

Ukrainian officials are desperately trying to persuade Musk to return the satellites, the book says, arguing that they are vital to their fight against Russian aggression. But Musk refused, according to quotes, saying that Ukraine was “going too far and inviting a strategic defeat.”

Mykailo Podolyak, an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, criticized Musk for the revelations in the book.

“By not allowing Ukrainian drones to destroy part of a Russian military fleet by disrupting Starlink, Elon Musk allowed this fleet to fire Kalibr missiles at Ukrainian cities,” Podolyak said. “As a result, residents, children are killed. This is the price of a cocktail of ignorance and a big ego,” he added.

Musk has faced criticism for repeating Russia’s talking points on the war in Ukraine, suggesting that Ukraine should cede territory in eastern Ukraine to Russia.

After he scrapped X policies designed to combat disinformation, the site was flooded with pro-Russian propaganda, a European Union study released this week.