- A Ukrainian sodlier said his unit’s drone attack was ruined by Elon Musk, per Ukrainian Pravda.
- His team was approaching a Russian “on edge” as the drone was going to attack Russia’s navy, he told the outlet.
- But Musk cut access to Starlink, cutting short the operation, he added.
A Ukrainian drone pilot described being part of the mission that was ruined when Elon Musk cut Starlink access.
The account was in a report by Ukrainska Pravda, which did not give specifics about its source beyond that he was part of the mission.
It gives the Ukrainian perspective on the incident, which Elon Musk described to his biographer Walter Isaacson, kicking of a series of headlines in late 2023.
The soldier told the outlet that he and his unit planned to attack a Russian frigate, the Admiral Makarov, using exploding sea drones in September 2022.
The ship was near the port city of Sevastopol in occupied Crimea.
But as they drew near — about 70 km, or 43 miles — their link to the drones was severed, the soldier said.
“Everyone was on edge, as we were going to attack it. And then our communication was cut off,” he told the outlet, per an abbreviated English version of the story.
He added: “Elon Musk switched off Starlink, which we used to control the vessels.”
The outlet said that Mykhailo Fedorov, Ukraine’s Minister of Digital Transformation, was watching the operation remotely, and tried to talk Musk into restoring access.
Musk “did not listen,” an unnamed individual who was with Fedorov told the outlet.
As a result, the attack on the Admiral Makarov failed.
The foiled attack became public knowledge in September 2023 when The Washington Post published an excerpt from the Musk biography describing the details.
Per the excerpt, Musk instructed Starlink engineers to turn off service within 100 kilometers of Crimea as soon as he learned that a strike was underway.
He feared the attack could be “mini Pearl Harbor” and lead to a nuclear war, the excerpt added.
Hours after the excerpt was published, Musk defended his actions in a post on X, saying that to allow Starlink access would have left its operator SpaceX “explicitly complicit in a major act of war and conflict escalation.”
Observers of the Ukraine war have agonized over whether various types of support for Ukraine might push Russia’s President Vladimir Putin to deploy nuclear weapons.
So far, he has not, despite Western countries having given Ukraine steadily more powerful weapons.
Since Musk disrupted the attack in 2022, Ukraine has carried out broadly similar strikes on Russia warships in Crimea, though without Starlink.
While the war continued to grind on, it did not prompt a sudden escalation, as Musk feared.
Musk was later challenged over his decision by a Sky News reporter, who asked him if his “ego and ignorance” in that moment had cost Ukrainian lives.
He refused to answer.
