Media: Musk ordered to turn off Starlink near Crimea in 2022 to disrupt an attack by the Ukrainian Armed Forces

SpaceX founder Elon Musk last year secretly ordered his employees to shut down the Starlink satellite communications network off the coast of Crimea to thwart an attack by the Ukrainian Armed Forces on Russian warships. About it writes CNN with a link to an excerpt from a new biography of the billionaire authored by Walter Isaacson.

According to him, the attack involved Ukrainian underwater drones filled with explosives. Approaching the Russian ships, they “lost contact and were thrown ashore without causing harm.” Musk, Isaacson writes, feared that Russia might use nuclear weapons in this case.

“Starlink was not designed to fight in wars. This was done so that people could watch Netflix, relax, go online to study, and do good peaceful things rather than drone strikes,” Musk is quoted as saying in the biography.

After this, representatives of the White House and the Pentagon, as well as Deputy Prime Minister of Ukraine Mikhail Fedorov, held talks with the billionaire. Musk allegedly said he would not turn on satellite coverage for Crimea again because Ukraine was “going too far.”

Musk announced the start of Starlink operation in Ukraine at the end of February 2022; Ukrainian officials had previously approached him with a corresponding request. The network is designed to provide broadband Internet access.

As Isaacson notes, after disagreements over who should pay for the supply and operation of Starlink in Ukraine, SpaceX was eventually able to reach an agreement with the US and European governments to pay for another 100,000 new terminals earlier this year. The network is actively used by the Ukrainian Armed Forces.

In February 2023, SpaceX restricted the use of Starlink to control Ukrainian drones, saying that the Ukrainian military’s use of Starlink “as a weapon” was not part of the terms of the agreement. In March Musk statedthat Starlink is used to provide communications in Ukraine, but it should not cause an escalation of the conflict.

Since the start of the special operation in Ukraine, Russian authorities have repeatedly said that civilian satellites are being used in Ukraine for military purposes. In the fall of 2022, the Russian Foreign Ministry stated that if satellites are used for military purposes, they could become “legitimate targets” of Russia. The White House warned Moscow of retaliatory actions and said it would continue to use its funds in Ukraine.