Did Elon Musk Order 2022 Starlink Shutdown in Ukraine? What SpaceX Revealed

Did Elon Musk Order 2022 Starlink Shutdown in Ukraine?: Elon Musk ordered Starlink to shut down coverage over part of Ukraine’s Kherson Oblast during a major counteroffensive in the fall of 2022, according to Reuters on July 25, citing sources.

Three people familiar with the matter said Musk told a senior SpaceX engineer to turn off the service in the Beryslav area where Ukrainian forces were trying to encircle Russian troops.

Front-line units lost connectivity, drones stopped sending video and artillery couldn’t fire because of lack of coordination. A Ukrainian military source told Reuters the outage directly contributed to the failure of the encirclement operation.

On the front line, Ukrainian units lost contact, drones stopped sending video and artillery couldn’t fire because of lack of coordination. According to a military source, this led to the disruption of the encirclement of Russian troops in the Beryslav area.

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Although Ukraine eventually liberated Beryslav and Kherson, this was the first time Musk had deliberately restricted Starlink over a combat zone. Some SpaceX employees were shocked and military officials in the US and Ukraine are concerned that he has real influence over the war.

Musk has publicly denied it. In March 2024 he wrote on X (formerly Twitter): “We would never do such a thing.” But sources say the decision to turn off was because of Musk’s fear of a possible nuclear escalation by the Russian Federation in response to the rapid advance of the Ukrainian Armed Forces. His concerns, according to a former White House official, were shared by some American officials.

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No official statement has been made but SpaceX has denied claims that Elon Musk ordered a comms shutdown during the Ukraine war.

In an email to Reuters, a SpaceX spokesperson called the report “inaccurate.”

The news came a day after Starlink suffered a global outage on July 24. The company hasn’t said what caused it but the incident renewed concerns about Starlink’s role in Ukraine’s communications infrastructure during wartime.

Hospitals, schools and front-line military units across Ukraine rely heavily on it.

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