DUE to fear of a nuclear war, Starlink CEO Elon Musk reportedly tried to shut down Ukrainian access to its satellite communications network when their forces were trying to attack the Russian fleet off the Crimea Coast in 2022, but is there more to it and what is the multibillionaire’s response?
An excerpt from a biography written by Walter Isaacson titled Elon Musk revealed.
The multibillionaire and Starlink CEO was reportedly worried about being dragged into the war and ordered Space X engineers to turn off the satellite as the Ukrainian Forces were attempting to attack the Russian fleet off the Crimea Coast last year.
Musk feared that Kyiv’s attack would amount to a Mini Pearl Harbor, which would lead to Russia resorting to nuclear retaliation.
Isaacson wrote that after the satellites were disconnected, the Ukrainian drones lost connectivity and were washed ashore harmlessly.
“How am I in this war?..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,” according to Elon Musk, CEO of Starlink.
The biographer also claimed that Ukraine’s ex-deputy Prime Minister, Mykhailo Fedorov, begged Musk to restore access to the satellites; however, the billionaire denied the request and said that Kyiv’s drone attack was going too far and was inviting strategic defeat.
Meanwhile, Elon took to X, formerly known as Twitter, to clarify that the Starlink in question were not activated and that Space X did not deactivate anything.
“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.”
“If I had agreed to their request, then SpaceX would be explicitly complicit in a major act of war and conflict escalation,” Elon Musk added.
This revelation gained a reaction from two famous senior officials of Russia and Ukraine- Ukrainian Pres. Volodymyr Zelenskyy‘s top aide, Mykhailo Podolyak, and former Russian President and Current Deputy Chair of Russia’s Security Council Dmitry Medvedev.
Podolyak took to X to lash out at Musk and accused him of being ignorant with a big ego.
Medvedev, on the other hand, took to X to praise Musk for being concerned about a retaliatory nuclear strike from Russia, calling him the last adequate mind in North America.
It can be remembered that Musk donated more than 20,000 terminals of Starlink to Ukraine at the beginning of the conflict in February 2022.
But in October of last year, Musk wrote to the Pentagon saying that Starlink could no longer afford to continue funding the service.
He also asked the Biden administration to cover the cost.
But earlier this year, U.S. and European governments negotiated a deal by paying for another 100,000 Starlink satellite dishes to be sent to Ukraine.
