· X post
Musk confirms he declined Ukraine's 2022 request to enable Starlink near Sevastopol for an attack
…an emergency request from government authorities to activate Starlink all the way to Sevastopol
What he said or did
Responding to excerpts of Walter Isaacson's biography, Musk wrote that there was an emergency request from government authorities to activate Starlink all the way to Sevastopol
and that agreeing would have made SpaceX explicitly complicit
in a major act of war. He added: SpaceX did not deactivate anything.
Background
Isaacson's book, excerpted in The Washington Post, said Ukraine attempted a drone-submarine attack on the Russian fleet at Sevastopol in September 2022 and that Musk had coverage near Crimea turned off; it also said Musk had spoken with Russia's ambassador to the US.
Official response
Presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak wrote that civilians, children are being killed
as a result. Former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev praised Musk on X.
Fact-checks and findings
Isaacson corrected his account, writing that the Ukrainians THOUGHT coverage was enabled all the way to Crimea, but it was not
; The Washington Post's correction said coverage within 100 km of the Crimean coast had already been disabled before the attack and Musk refused requests to enable it. CNN and the Post corrected reports that Musk had turned coverage off during the attack (Snopes, Mediaite).
What happened next
Musk later said US sanctions barred Starlink in occupied areas without special permission and that he would have acted on a direct presidential directive, but none came (Snopes, citing his 11 September 2023 remarks).
Sources
- AFP (via The Times of Israel)8 Sep 2023
- Snopes14 Sep 2023
- Mediaite11 Sep 2023
- Fortune8 Sep 2023
This entry records what was publicly said or done, as reported by the sources above. Quotes are attributed to the person who made them.
