Months ago, there was an unusual increase in outages of the US satellite internet service Starlink in areas where Ukrainian forces had gained ground. Now Elon Musk, founder of space company SpaceX, claims he prevented a major Ukrainian attack on Russia’s Black Sea Fleet last year. According to his own statements, the multi-billionaire severed the Ukrainian army’s connection to satellite internet.
“There has been an urgent request from government agencies to activate Starlink as far as Sebastopol,” Musk wrote on internet platform X (formerly Twitter) on Thursday. “The clear intention was to sink most of the Russian fleet at anchor.” Musk further wrote, “If I had agreed to their request, SpaceX would be explicitly involved in a major act of war and an escalation of conflict.”
Underwater drones loaded with explosives stopped
Musk responded with his post to a published excerpt from an upcoming biography of the billionaire by Walter Isaacson. In the excerpt published by The Washington Post, Isaacson wrote that last September the Ukrainian military “tried to launch a surprise attack on the Russian naval fleet stationed in Sevastopol, Crimea, by sending six small underwater drones loaded with explosives.” Starlink was used to guide them to their destination.
According to Isaacson, Musk has spoken with the Russian ambassador to the United States. He explicitly told him “that a Ukrainian drone strike on Crimea would trigger a nuclear response.” Musk secretly instructed his engineers to eliminate coverage within a 60-mile radius of the Crimean coast. “When the Ukrainian underwater drones came close to the Russian fleet in Sevastopol, they lost communications and washed harmlessly ashore,” Isaacson wrote. Musk contradicted Isaacson’s story in another message. “The Starlink regions in question are not activated. SpaceX hasn’t disabled anything,” Musk wrote (see above).
After the Russian army invaded Ukraine, more than 22,000 Starlink antennas were delivered to the Ukrainian government. This connection to satellites in space made navigation and observation of enemies possible, even when mobile and landline internet failed. The system turned out to be a ‘secret weapon’ against which countless Russian hackers were powerless.
Source: Krone
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