In September 2023, an excerpt of Walter Isaacson’s biography said Musk had secretly turned off Starlink near Crimea to thwart a Ukrainian naval-drone attack on Russia’s fleet in 2022. The Washington Post and Isaacson then corrected it: coverage had not been enabled there, and Musk refused Ukraine’s request to switch it on. [1][5]
Musk confirmed that account. He said Ukraine’s government made an emergency request to activate Starlink to Sevastopol and that agreeing would have made SpaceX complicit in a major act of war. [2]
The episode raised a real question, which AP reported officials were weighing: a private company, and one man, can shape how a war’s communications work. [3]
That October, Musk offered a plan to end the war. President Volodymyr Zelensky dismissed it and said Musk did not understand the conflict. [4]
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