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Article informationAuthor, Dearbell Jordan Role, BBC News
2 hours ago
Elon Musk said he refused to give Kiev access to his Starlink communications network, a massive network of satellites that provide internet services, over Crimea to avoid taking part in a “major act of war.”
Musk said that Kiev sent an emergency request to activate the Starlink network in Sevastopol, where a major Russian seaport is located.
Musk’s comments came after a book claimed that he turned off the Starlink network to thwart a drone attack on Russian ships.
A senior Ukrainian official said this enabled Russia to launch attacks and accused it of “committing bad acts.”
He added, “By preventing the Ukrainian marches and destroying part of the Russian military fleet through Starlink intervention, Elon Musk allowed this fleet to launch Caliber missiles at Ukrainian cities.”
The senior official asked: “Why do some people want so badly to defend war criminals and want to commit murder? Do they now realize that they are committing bad acts and encouraging them?”
This dispute comes after the publication of a biography of American billionaire Elon Musk, written by Walter Isaacson, which claims that Musk disrupted Ukraine’s access to Starlink because he feared that the ambush of the Russian naval fleet in Crimea could trigger a nuclear attack from the Kremlin in response to the attack. Planned Ukrainian attack.
Walter Isaacson wrote that Ukraine targeted Russian ships in Sevastopol with unmanned submarines carrying explosives, but they lost contact with Starlink and “washed ashore without causing any damage.”
The Starlink stations connect to SpaceX satellites in orbit and were essential for maintaining internet and communications connectivity in Ukraine, where the conflict had disrupted the country’s infrastructure.
SpaceX, in which Musk owns the largest percentage of shares, began supplying Ukraine with thousands of Starlink satellite dishes, shortly after Russia launched its comprehensive attack on its neighbors in February of last year.
In response to the book’s claim, Musk said on the X website (formerly known as Twitter) that SpaceX “didn’t disrupt anything” because it was not disrupted in those areas in the first place.
Musk added, saying: “There was an emergency request from government authorities to activate Starlink all the way to Sevastopol. The clear intention was to sink most of the Russian fleet stationed at the anchorage. If they agreed to their request, SpaceX would be clearly complicit in the work.” “A major war and escalation of the conflict.”
Dmitry Medvedev, the former prime minister of Russia, tweeted: “If what Walter Isaacson wrote in his book is true, then Musk is the last competent mind in North America.”
Russia illegally annexed Crimea in 2014, eight years before Moscow launched its comprehensive invasion of Ukraine.
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In the past, Musk has said that although Starlink “has become the communications backbone in Ukraine all the way to the front lines,” “we do not allow Starlink to be used for long-range drone strikes.”
Musk reiterated this point to Isaacson, asking: “What is my role in this war? The goal of Starlink was not to engage in wars. The goal was for people to be able to watch Netflix, relax, go online to do school lessons and do good peaceful things, not launch attacks using planes.” without pilot.”
Elon Musk also expressed a personal opinion, during which he called for a truce and said that Ukrainians and Russians were dying “in order to gain or lose small patches of territory.” This does not equal the loss of their lives.
Putin sparked anger last year when he proposed a plan to end the war that suggested the world officially recognize the Crimean peninsula as part of Russia, and asked residents of the areas that Russia seized last year to vote on which country they wanted to be part of.
Former Russian world chess champion Garry Kasparov said the plan showed “moral folly.”
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2023-09-08 19:17:58
