Musk says he did not respond to Ukraine ask for Starlink

Elon Musk said he never responded to a request from Ukraine to use Starlink for a drone attack on a Russian fleet in the Black Sea, but also did not make any changes to the satellite internet network to thwart the strike.

Musk used a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, to clarify details about the incident, which he maintained was incorrectly interpreted from an excerpt of the forthcoming biography “Elon Musk” written by Walter Isaacson.

CNN reported on Thursday that Musk secretly had Starlink turned off to disrupt a sneak attack on Russia’s Black Sea fleet.

Isaacson expanded on the billionaire’s decision and explained that Musk did not alter the Starlink network in any way, but instead declined to increase its coverage.

“To clarify on the Starlink issue: the Ukrainians THOUGHT coverage was enabled all the way to Crimea, but it was not,” Isaacson said in a post on X.

“They asked Musk to enable it for their drone sub attack on the Russian fleet. Musk did not enable it, because he thought, probably correctly, that would cause a major war.”

Musk retweeted his biographer’s explanation and thanked Isaacson for the clarification.

“The onus is meaningfully different if I refused to act upon a request from Ukraine vs. made a deliberate change to Starlink to thwart Ukraine,” Musk wrote.

“At no point did I or anyone at SpaceX promise coverage over Crimea. Moreover, our terms of service clearly prohibit Starlink for offensive military action, as we are a civilian system, so they were again asking for something that was expressly prohibited.”

Musk’s comments came after claims that he deactivated Starlink to prevent the attack and criticism from Ukrainian officials.

“Sometimes a mistake is much more than just a mistake,” Mykhailo Podolyak, adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on X Thursday.

“By not allowing Ukrainian drones to destroy part of the Russian military (!) fleet via #Starlink interference, @elonmusk allowed this fleet to fire Kalibr missiles at Ukrainian cities. As a result, civilians, children are being killed.”

However, Musk defended his decision, saying that he does not want his company, SpaceX, to be “explicitly complicit in a major act of war and conflict escalation.”

Isaacson’s biography on Musk is set to go on sale on Tuesday.