American billionaire Elon Musk ordered the Starlink satellite internet to be turned off and thwarted the Ukrainian Armed Forces’ counteroffensive in 2022. This was reported by Reuters, citing sources.
According to three people familiar with the order, Musk instructed a senior engineer at SpaceX’s California office to turn off coverage, including in the Kherson area.
“We have to do this,” Michael Nicholls, an engineer at the company, told his colleagues.
It is noted that, on the entrepreneur’s orders, Ukrainian troops lost communications, drones stopped working, and artillery units that used Starlink to direct fire had difficulty hitting targets.
The agency’s source emphasized that this decision shocked some of the company’s employees and effectively changed the front line, allowing Musk to “take the outcome of the conflict into his own hands.”
A SpaceX spokesperson told the publication that the information was “inaccurate,” and referred reporters to an earlier X social media post in which the company said Starlink was fully committed to providing services to Ukraine.
Three people familiar with Musk’s decision added that the order was likely given because the entrepreneur feared that a Ukrainian counterattack could “provoke nuclear retaliation from Russia.”
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