An advisor to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky criticized Elon Musk over a report that he personally thwarted a strike on a Russian naval fleet in the Crimean peninsula last year.
“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,” Mykhailo Podolyak said. “As a result, civilians, children are being killed. This is the price of a cocktail of ignorance and big ego.”
Details about the raid were revealed by author and journalist Walter Isaacson in his upcoming biography on Musk, titled “Elon Musk”. An excerpt was published by CNN.
As Ukrainian submarine drones strapped with explosives approached the Russian fleet, they “lost connectivity and washed ashore harmlessly,” Isaacson writes, according to CNN.
Musk responded to the report on Twitter, writing: “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. If I had agreed to their request, then SpaceX would be explicitly complicit in a major act of war and conflict escalation,” he added.
Isaacson wrote that Musk said he was worried an attack on the Russian fleet would trigger a “mini-Pearl Harbor” and a possible nuclear retaliation by Russia.
While officials in Ukraine criticize Musk, over in Russia they are praising his decision.
Russia’s former Prime Minister Dmitri Medvedev said Musk may be “the last adequate mind in North America,” and “is the one with the balls.”
