Elon Musk committed ‘evil’ by stopping attack on Russia: Ukraine
A senior aide to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky accused Elon Musk of “committing evil” — and being driven by “a cocktail of ignorance and big ego” — when he thwarted a drone attack on a Russian fleet.
Mykhailo Podolyak lashed out in the wake of claims in a new biography of the tech billionaire that Musk, in 2022, ordered his engineers to turn off his Starlink satellite network operated by SpaceX in Crimea to prevent a “mini-Pearl Harbor” targeting Moscow’s warships.
“Sometimes a mistake is much more than just a mistake,” Zelensky’s adviser wrote in an angry post on X, formerly known as Twitter — a platform also owned by Musk.
Podolyak argued that by not letting Ukrainian drones destroy a portion of Russia’s Black Sea fleet through his alleged meddling with the Starlink network, Musk allowed the naval ships to fire Kalibr missiles on Ukrainian cities and slaughter civilians.
“This is the price of a cocktail of ignorance and big ego,” the Ukrainian official seethed. “However, 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?”
Facing backlash, Musk responded to the claims in Walter Isaacson’s soon-to-be published book, “Elon Musk,” from which excerpts were featured by CNN Thursday.
The 52-year-old business tycoon denied turning off the satellites — but admitted he wouldn’t allow the planned attack to go forward.
“The Starlink regions in question were not activated. SpaceX did not deactivate anything,” Musk said in a tweet responding to a thread about Isaacson’s book.
In a separate post, Musk explained that government officials made an emergency request to activate Starlink satellites all the way to the port of Sevastopol in Russia-annexed Crimea.
“The obvious intent being to sink most of the Russian fleet at anchor,” Musk wrote. “If I had agreed to their request, then SpaceX would be explicitly complicit in a major act of war and conflict escalation.”
According to CNN, Isaacson wrote that as a result of the satellites not being active, Ukrainian submarine drones carrying bombs toward Russia’s Black Sea fleet “lost connectivity and washed ashore harmlessly.”
Musk allegedly believed if the attack was allowed be successfully carried out, Moscow would have responded by deploying nuclear weapons — a concern he had based on conversations with senior Russian officials, according to the biography that’ll be released next week.
Musk was quoted as allegedly telling Isaacson that Starlink’s 2,200 satellite constellation, which has been crucial to Ukraine’s use of drones, “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.”
In February, SpaceX president Gwynne Shotwell surprised and angered Ukraine’s leadership by complaining that Kyiv has “weaponized” their internet service.
The satellite links help Ukrainian forces find the enemy and target long-range artillery strikes.
Speaking to reporters after a conference in Washington DC, Shotwell hinted that SpaceX has taken action to restrict Ukraine’s use of Starlink satellites for military purposes — but it’s unknown if she was talking about the thwarted Crimea attack.
In October 2022, Musk called on the Pentagon to take over funding of the Starlink network operating in Ukraine after sparking an outage over his argument that Russia should be allowed to keep Crimea as part of a peace deal.
Musk ultimately backed down and continued footing the bill for Ukraine’s satellite internet service, which has been a lifeline for the war-ravaged country.
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