Elon Musk dodges question if he cut off Starlink to Kyiv due to 'ego' that cost lives

Tech billionaire and X Corp's CEO Elon Musk on Wednesday dodged the reporter when asked about claims that his withholding the satellite network Starlink to Ukrainian forces and his 'ignorance and ego' had cost Ukrainian lives.  Musk was accused of enabling Russia's forces and emboldening Russia's President Vladimir Putin after he abruptly cut off the internet access for Ukraine during the counteroffensive which led to Russian attacks on the Ukrainian defensive positions.

Musk, who attended a meeting on AI regulations at the US Capitol Hill earlier yesterday was confronted by a reporter of Sky News who enquired if his pride led to severing the internet connection for the Ukrainian military amid war. Tesla and SpaceX boss, however, did not choose to reply and dodged the question. 

Last September, Ukraine's forces planned a drone attack on a Russian naval base near the 2014 annexed Crimean coast using Starlink satellites. But the plan couldn't be executed as Musk ordered the Starlink to be turned off. Musk, at the All-In Summit in Los Angeles on Sept. 12, clarified that he had, in fact, refused Ukrainian request to activate his Starlink satellite network in Crimea's port city of Sevastopol due to Russian sanctions. Tesla CEO revealed that in order to provide internet services in the Russian-occupied peninsula, he needed authorization and permission from the US president, Joe Biden. 

"The sanctions include Crimea, and we are not allowed to turn on the connection to a sanctioned country without explicit government approval," Musk revealed for the first time at the forum. 

Musk also said that the attack could have led to a major escalation in the war. "If I had agreed to their request, then SpaceX would be explicitly complicit in a major act of war and conflict escalation," he wrote on X, formerly Twitter. 

Musk admits he 'directly spoke' with Russian President Putin 

Musk had previously admitted to Pentagon officials that he had spoken directly to Russia's President Vladimir Putin during a phone call about his aerospace firm SpaceX's supply of Starlink internet service to Ukraine’s military. SpaceX's CEO revealed this information to Colin Kahl, the then Pentagon’s top policy official in October 2022 while having a conversation about Ukrainian forces losing the Starlink service as they marched into the territory contested by Russia, sources told the New Yorker. 

US Under-Secretary of Defence for Policy at the Pentagon spoke with X Corp's CEO after he held several meetings with the officials in the UK, France, and Germany virtually over fears of severing internet connection. The US official was concerned after Ukraine's forces, who were defending their territory against Russian aggression, complained about the outages and severed connectivity of the Starlink internet on the frontlines.  At the time, Musk had given the Pentagon an ultimatum that if the US government did not pay for the internet service in Ukraine, which was calculated at four hundred million dollars annually, he would cut off the access amid the ongoing war. It is to be noted that the Starlink satellite internet terminals have been a vital source of communication and for gathering intelligence updates for Ukraine’s military since the country's internet networks were destroyed during the Russian assaults amid the ongoing hostilities.