". Elon Musk says he refused to give Kyiv access to
his Starlink communications network over Crimea to avoid complicity in a
"major act of war".
Kyiv had sent an emergency request to activate Starlink to
Sevastopol, home to a major Russian navy port, he said.
His comments came after a book alleged he had switched off
Starlink to thwart a drone attack on Russian ships.
A senior Ukrainian official says this enabled Russian
attacks and accused him of "committing evil".
Russian naval vessels had since taken part in deadly attacks
on civilians, he said
"By not allowing Ukrainian drones to destroy part of
the Russian military (!) fleet via Starlink interference, Elon Musk allowed
this fleet to fire Kalibr missiles at Ukrainian cities," he said.
"Why do some people so desperately want to defend war
criminals and their desire to commit murder? And do they now realize that they
are committing evil and encouraging evil?" he added.
The row follows the release of a biography of the billionaire
by Walter Isaacson which alleges that Mr Musk switched off Ukraine's access to
Starlink because he feared that an ambush of Russia's naval fleet in Crimea
could provoke a nuclear response from the Kremlin.
Ukraine targeted Russian ships in Sevastopol with submarine
drones carrying explosives but they lost connection to Starlink and
"washed ashore harmlessly", Mr. Isaacson wrote.
Starlink terminals connect to SpaceX satellites in orbit and
have been crucial for maintaining internet connectivity and communication in
Ukraine as the conflict has disrupted the country's infrastructure.
SpaceX, in which Mr. Musk is the largest shareholder, began
providing thousands of Starlink satellite dishes to Ukraine shortly after
Russia launched its full-scale assault on its neighbor in February last year.
Responding to the book's claim, Mr Musk said on X that
SpaceX "did not deactivate anything" because it had not been
activated in those regions in the first place.
"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," he said.
"If I had agreed to their request, then SpaceX would be
explicitly complicit in a major act of war and conflict escalation."
Dmitry Medvedev, Russia's former prime minister, tweeted:
"If what Isaacson has written in his book is true, then it looks like Musk
is the last adequate mind in North America."
Russia illegally annexed Crimea in 2014, eight years before
Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
In the past, Mr. Musk has said that while the system had
"become the connectivity backbone of Ukraine all the way up to the front
lines", "we are not allowing Starlink to be used for long-range drone
strikes".
Mr Musk reiterated the point to Mr Isaacson, asking:
"How am I in this war? Starlink was not meant to be involved in wars. It
was so people can watch Netflix and chill and get online for school and do good
peaceful things, not drone strikes."
He also offered a personal opinion, calling for a truce and
saying that Ukrainians and Russians were dying "to gain and lose small
pieces of land" and this was not worth their lives.
He provoked anger last year when he proposed a plan to end
the war which suggested the world formally recognize Crimea as part of Russia
and asking residents of regions seized by Russia last year to vote on which
country they wanted to be part of.
Russian chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov said that the plan
displayed "moral idiocy".
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