Elon Musk on Thursday acknowledged turning off internet access from his Starlink satellites during a Ukrainian raid last year on a Russian naval fleet, saying he did so to prevent SpaceX from being “complicit in a major act of war and conflict escalation.”
Musk responded on his social media platform X to new details from an upcoming book that indicated he ordered his engineers to shut off communications network before the attack off the Crimean coast.
“There was an emergency request from government authorities to activate Starlink all the way to Sevastopol,” Musk wrote on X, the platform previously known as Twitter.
“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,” Musk wrote.
An excerpt about the raid from American author and journalist Walter Isaacson’s upcoming biography on Musk, titled “Elon Musk,” was published by CNN.
Ukrainian submarine drones loaded with explosives were approaching a Russian naval fleet in the Crimean city of Sevastopol when they lost connection and “washed ashore harmlessly,” according to Isaacson.
Musk was concerned about Russia responding to the naval attack with a nuclear weapon, Isaacson wrote in the book, according to CNN. Ukrainian officials begged him to turn the service back on, but he declined to do it for the Crimea incident.
Starlink has been an incredibly important service for Ukrainian troops in the war against Russia. Musk provided the service to Kyiv in early 2022 after Russia disrupted Ukraine’s communications systems.
Still, the billionaire has questioned his involvement in the war, according to Isaacson.
“How am I in this war?” Musk asked Isaacson, per CNN. “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.”
Earlier this year, Musk also stressed on X that he reserved the right to turn off the service if needed but claimed he had never done so.
“SpaceX commercial terminals, like other commercial products, are meant for private use, not military, but we have not exercised our right to turn them off,” he wrote in February. “We’re trying hard to do the right thing, where the ‘right thing’ is an extremely difficult moral question.”
Musk was an early supporter of Ukraine who challenged Russian President Vladimir Putin to a duel shortly after the Russian invasion. He has since, however, floated peace plans to end the war that enraged Ukrainian supporters.
Musk last fall also said he could not keep funding Starlink in Ukraine and requested the Pentagon pick up the tab, but eventually relented. However, the Pentagon announced in June that it was paying for Starlink service in Ukraine.
Isaacson is the author of biographies on Steve Jobs, Benjamin Franklin and Albert Einstein. His new biography “Elon Musk” is set to be released Sept. 12.