Not deactivated, but refused to activate: Musk explains how he interfered with the UAF's attack on the Russian fleet in Crimea

Businessman Elon Musk said that he had not deactivated Starlink satellite communication for the drones near the Crimeam coast, but had refused to activate it at Ukraine's request so as to prevent Ukraine's attack on the Russian fleet in Sevastopol.

He wrote this on X (formerly Twitter) in response to a report alleging that he deactivated Starlink on purpose, "Economichna Pravda" reports.

"The Starlink regions in question were not activated. SpaceX did not deactivate anything," Musk wrote.

"There was an emergency request from government authorities to activate Starlink all the way to Sevastopol. 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," the billionaire said.

He also claims that "Both sides should agree to a truce."

"Every day that passes, more Ukrainian and Russian youth die to gain and lose small pieces of land, with borders barely changing. This is not worth their lives," says Musk.

CNN previosuly reported that, according to Musk's biographer Walter Isaacson, Elon Musk had secretly ordered his engineers to deactivate the Starlink satellite network to prevent a Ukrainian attack on the Russian fleet in Crimea. Musk's decision, which prompted Ukrainian officials to request that he reactivates the satellites, was prompted by his concern that Russia would retaliate with a nuclear strike. The concern, which, according to Isaacson, was facilitated by Musk's conversations with high-ranking Russian officials.

In October 2022, CNN reported that Elon Musk's company SpaceX had informed the Pentagon that they would refuse to fund Starlink in Ukraine. Musk's company stated in the letter that it "can no longer continue to fund the Starlink service as we did before." The letter also contained a request to the Pentagon to take over the funding for Ukraine's governmental and military use of the Starlink system. Musk confirmed this intention.

In early October, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk rejected a Ukrainian request to extend his satellite internet service Starlink to Russian-occupied Crimea. According to him, an effort to retake the peninsula from Russian forces could lead to a nuclear war.