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https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/musk-says-he-refused-kyiv-request-use-starlink-attack-russia-2023-09-08/
ERROR LOADING
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Elon Musk said he refused a Ukrainian request to activate his Starlink satellite network in Crimea’s port city of Sevastopol last year to aid an attack on Russia’s fleet there, saying he feared complicity in a “major” act of war.
The billionaire businessman made the comment on his social media platform X after CNN cited a excerpt from a new biography of Musk that says he ordered the Starlink network turned off near the Crimean coast last year to disrupt the Ukrainian sneak attack.
In the post on X - formerly known as Twitter - late on Thursday, Musk said he had no choice but to reject an emergency request from Ukraine “to activate Starlink all the way to Sevastopol.” He did not give the date of the request and the excerpt did not specify it.
“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.”
>Mykhailo Podolyak, a top adviser to Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, slammed the decision in a post on X, accusing Musk of “committing evil” and defending “war criminals and their desire to commit murder.”
Russia, which seized the strategic Crimea peninsula in 2014, bases its Black Sea Fleet in Sevastopol and has used the fleet in a de factor blockade of Ukrainian ports since its full-scale invasion in 2022.
The Russian fleet fires cruise missiles at Ukrainian civilian targets, and Kyiv has launched attacks on Russian ships using maritime drones.
According to CNN, Walter Isaacson’s new biography “Elon Musk,” to be released by Simon & Schuster on Tuesday, says that when Ukrainian explosive-laden submarine drones last year approached the Russian fleet, they “lost connectivity and washed ashore harmlessly.”
ERROR LOADING
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Elon Musk said he refused a Ukrainian request to activate his Starlink satellite network in Crimea’s port city of Sevastopol last year to aid an attack on Russia’s fleet there, saying he feared complicity in a “major” act of war.
The billionaire businessman made the comment on his social media platform X after CNN cited a excerpt from a new biography of Musk that says he ordered the Starlink network turned off near the Crimean coast last year to disrupt the Ukrainian sneak attack.
In the post on X - formerly known as Twitter - late on Thursday, Musk said he had no choice but to reject an emergency request from Ukraine “to activate Starlink all the way to Sevastopol.” He did not give the date of the request and the excerpt did not specify it.
“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.”
>Mykhailo Podolyak, a top adviser to Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, slammed the decision in a post on X, accusing Musk of “committing evil” and defending “war criminals and their desire to commit murder.”
Russia, which seized the strategic Crimea peninsula in 2014, bases its Black Sea Fleet in Sevastopol and has used the fleet in a de factor blockade of Ukrainian ports since its full-scale invasion in 2022.
The Russian fleet fires cruise missiles at Ukrainian civilian targets, and Kyiv has launched attacks on Russian ships using maritime drones.
According to CNN, Walter Isaacson’s new biography “Elon Musk,” to be released by Simon & Schuster on Tuesday, says that when Ukrainian explosive-laden submarine drones last year approached the Russian fleet, they “lost connectivity and washed ashore harmlessly.”
