Elon Musk Responds After Ukraine Accuses Him of Disrupting Attack on Russian Fleet

Elon Musk in Paris on June 16, 2023. Joel Sagat/AFP via Getty Images

Elon Musk has clarified his role in thwarting a Ukrainian sneak attack on a Russian fleet in Crimea after a top aide to Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy lashed out over the apparent revelation and accused Mr. Musk of “committing evil.”

The Starlink satellite communication network that Mr. Musk’s SpaceX has provided to Ukraine has been widely credited as a key factor in helping the country defy all odds and stay in the fight for as long as it has amid the Russian invasion.

But excerpts from an upcoming autobiography on Mr. Musk, as reported by CNN, claim that the SpaceX chief secretly ordered Starlink to be deactivated near the coast of Crimea last year in order to prevent a covert attack against Russian naval vessels by Ukrainian submarine drones armed with explosives.

The author of the soon-to-be-published book, Walter Isaacson, wrote that as the drone approached the Russian fleet, they “lost connectivity and washed ashore harmlessly,” per CNN.

According to the outlet, Mr. Isaacson wrote that Mr. Musk’s decision was driven by the fear that Russia would see this as a major escalation and respond with nuclear strikes.

As news that Mr. Musk had secretly instructed his engineers to deactivate Starlink’s satellite communications network during a major Ukrainian offensive began to circulate online, Mykhailo Podolyak, advisor to Ukraine’s president, took to X to express scathing criticism.

“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,” Mr. Podolyak wrote.

“As a result, civilians, children are being killed. This is the price of a cocktail of ignorance and big ego,” he continued.

“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?” Mr. Podolyak added, basically accusing Mr. Musk of siding with Russia in the conflict and of being complicit in acts of “evil.”

Ukrainian Presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak speaks during an interview with The Associated Press in Kyiv, Ukraine, on Feb. 16, 2023. Efrem Lukatsky/AP Photo

‘Peaceful Things, Not Drone Strikes’

While Mr. Musk did not directly respond to President Zelenskyy’s advisor, he took to X to clarify his role in the disrupted Ukrainian drone attack.

“The Starlink regions in question were not activated. SpaceX did not deactivate anything,” he wrote.

Mr. Musk explained further that, “there was an emergency request from government authorities to activate Starlink all the way to Sevastopol“ and that ”the obvious intent being to sink most of the Russian fleet at anchor,” referring to a port city in Crimea that is a key naval base used by Russian forces.

“If I had agreed to their request, then SpaceX would be explicitly complicit in a major act of war and conflict escalation,” Mr. Musk added.

An antenna of the Starlink satellite-based broadband system donated by Elon Musk in Izyum, Kharkiv region on Sept. 25, 2022. Yasuyoshi Chiba/AFP via Getty Images

In the forthcoming biography, Mr. Isaacson reportedly wrote that, because Starlink was inactive over Sevastopol, Mr. Musk’s fears of a “mini-Pearl Harbor” did not come to pass.

In the book, Mr. Isaacson reportedly quotes Mr. Musk as having told him that “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.”

Mr. Isaacson also cites Mykhailo Fedorov, a deputy prime minister of Ukraine, as having pleaded with Mr. Musk to switch on connectivity so the strike could be carried out—but it fell on deaf ears.

Mr. Musk has also faced criticism from the Russian side for providing Ukraine with Starlink, with the billionaire tech mogul saying earlier that, at one point last year, the chief of Russia’s space agency threatened him for providing the satellite communication network to Ukrainian forces.

Starlink ‘Changed the War’

Days after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in late February 2022, Mr. Musk announced that SpaceX began providing Starlink internet connectivity to Ukrainians.

Starlink uses thousands of small satellites in orbit about 340 miles above the Earth’s surface to beam down high-speed internet, especially to remote areas, including ones hit by natural calamities or ravaged by war.

But while Starlink delivered an information lifeline to darkened swaths of the war-torn country, including hundreds of hospitals and clinics, it also served as a link to enable Ukrainian military drones to target Russian tanks and positions more effectively.

A Ukrainian soldier identified as Dima, whose last name was withheld for security reasons, told journalist David Patrikarakos that “Starlink is what changed the war in Ukraine’s favor. Russia went out of its way to blow up all our comms. Now they can’t. Starlink works under Katyusha fire, under artillery fire. It even works in Mariupol.”

While it’s unclear how crucial Starlink has been to Ukraine’s military efforts, a report in the British news outlet The Telegraph suggested Mr. Musk’s technology was helping Ukraine “win the drone war.”

Not long after Mr. Musk announced that he was providing Starlink to Ukraine, Dmitry Rogozin, then head of Russia’s space agency Roscosmos, criticized the move and warned of “consequences.”

“Elon Musk, thus, is involved in supplying the fascist forces in Ukraine with military communication equipment,” Mr. Rogozin said in a message to Russian media, according to a translation provided by Mr. Musk. “And for this, Elon, you will be held accountable like an adult—no matter how much you'll play the fool.”

At the time, Mr. Musk commented on the exchange with a dose of dark humor, saying in a tweet, “If I die under mysterious circumstances, it’s been nice knowin ya.”

The issue of Starlink being used on the battlefield in Ukraine also came up in the context of SpaceX funding for the service in Ukraine.

In October 2022, CNN reported that SpaceX told the Pentagon that it could not continue bearing the cost of supplying the Starlink service in Ukraine, which reportedly would be almost $400 million for the next 12 months. The report also claimed that SpaceX was looking to recoup the cost of providing the service.

Mr. Musk linked to the CNN report in a thread on X, clarifying that SpaceX was not asking to recoup past expenses but that it “cannot fund the existing system indefinitely.”

At the time, Mr. Musk said in a separate post on X that providing Starlink to Ukraine had already cost SpaceX $80 million and would grow to $100 million by the end of the year. In citing the Starlink costs, Mr. Musk was responding to a report from the Financial Times that claimed Ukrainian forces had reported Starlink outages during their military counteroffensive against Russia, hampering their efforts to retake territory captured by Russian forces.

“Bad reporting by FT,” Mr. Musk said, referring to the article’s claims that Starlink terminals and service had been paid for, adding that “only a small percentage have been.”

“As for what’s happening on the battlefield, that’s classified,” Mr. Musk added.