MEDVEDEV PRAISES MUSK
Instead, a spokesman said the Defense Department is “aware of the coverage and interest in this topic” and that while it does contract with Starlink, “for reasons of operational security we have not released additional information regarding their specific capabilities or other operational details”.
Musk’s account of preventing the attack on Russia’s fleet came in response to a post based on information from an upcoming biography by Walter Isaacson, which says the tech tycoon had deactivated Starlink in the Crimea area to do so.
In an excerpt published by The Washington Post on Thursday, Isaacson wrote that in September 2022, “the Ukrainian military was attempting a sneak attack on the Russian naval fleet based at Sevastopol in Crimea by sending six small drone submarines packed with explosives, and it was using Starlink to guide them to the target”.
Musk had “spoken to the Russian ambassador to the United States… (who) had explicitly told him that a Ukrainian attack on Crimea would lead to a nuclear response”, Isaacson wrote.
Musk “secretly told his engineers to turn off coverage within 100km of the Crimean coast. As a result, when the Ukrainian drone subs got near the Russian fleet in Sevastopol, they lost connectivity and washed ashore harmlessly”.
Musk pushed back against Isaacson’s account, saying in a post on X: “The Starlink regions in question were not activated. SpaceX did not deactivate anything.”
Dmitry Medvedev, Russia’s ex-president and current senior security advisor to President Vladimir Putin, praised Musk for the book’s account of his actions.
He “was concerned about a retaliatory nuclear strike”, Medvedev posted on X, adding: “If what Isaacson has written in his book is true, then it looks like Musk is the last adequate mind in North America.”
Musk also called Thursday for a truce in the conflict, in which Ukrainian forces regained significant ground from Russia last year but have only made slow progress in a counteroffensive launched in June.
“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,” Musk posted.
Ukraine’s leadership has repeatedly said it is committed to driving out Russian troops and retaking all its occupied territory. The US government says it will continue to support Kyiv with billions of dollars of weaponry and other support to drive back Putin’s invasion.
Source: CNA
