How Musk Foiled a Ukrainian Drone Attack on Russia’s Black Sea Fleet Last Year

Elon Musk foiled an assault on Russia’s Black Sea fleet final 12 months by refusing to let Ukraine use his satellite tv for pc community to information its drones, Mr. Musk has acknowledged, scary a livid response from a prime official in Kyiv and renewing questions in regards to the international energy wielded by a multibillionaire businessman.

Ukraine’s army forces have relied closely on the Starlink satellites owned by Mr. Musk’s SpaceX firm for communications since Russia disabled Ukraine’s web providers as a part of its invasion in early 2022. However Mr. Musk wouldn’t permit the community for use for an assault final September with maritime drones on the Russian naval base at Sevastopol in Crimea, the Ukrainian territory that Russia illegally seized in 2014 after which annexed.

On the time of the tried assault, Mr. Musk spoke with the Russian ambassador to the US, Anatoly I. Antonov, who had instructed him an assault on Crimea “might result in a nuclear response,” in accordance with a biography of Mr. Musk by the historian and journalist Walter Isaacson. Copies of the e book had been obtained by The New York Instances from a bookstore on Friday, although it’s not set to go on sale till Tuesday. The account was included in an excerpt from the e book printed on Thursday by The Washington Publish.

Mr. Musk confirmed parts of the story, writing on his social network X, previously Twitter, “If I had agreed to their request, then SpaceX can be explicitly complicit in a serious act of conflict and battle escalation.”

Inside days of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Mr. Musk started sending Starlink terminals to the nation — ultimately greater than 42,000 of them — in response to public pleas from Ukrainian officers. All through the conflict, the connectivity supplied by Starlink has been pivotal for Ukraine’s army to coordinate drone strikes and collect intelligence, and it has additionally aided hospitals, companies and help organizations throughout Ukraine.

Mr. Isaacson’s account left a number of questions unanswered, together with who had initiated the decision between Mr. Musk and Mr. Antonov, and whether or not Mr. Musk had revealed the deliberate assault to the Russian ambassador. The e book says that Mr. Musk consulted with Jake Sullivan, President Biden’s nationwide safety adviser, and Gen. Mark A. Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Workers, however not whether or not the American officers urged him to permit the assault to proceed.

Mr. Musk disputed one a part of the account by Mr. Isaacson, who reported that Mr. Musk had instructed Starlink “engineers to show off protection inside 100 kilometers of the Crimean coast.” Mr. Musk stated there had by no means been such protection. The request he turned down, he stated, was to increase the community’s vary to permit the assault.

Ukrainian and U.S. officers have lengthy been uneasy with the important place in Ukraine held by Mr. Musk, reportedly the wealthiest particular person on this planet. He has acknowledged for months being in touch with Russian in addition to Ukrainian officers, elevating issues about his being influenced by the Kremlin’s view. He’s additionally recognized for his unpredictability and has urged parts of a peace settlement to the conflict that officers in Kyiv have dismissed as capitulation to aggression.

Mr. Musk stated final October that he couldn’t “indefinitely” finance Ukraine’s use of Starlink, then abruptly reversed course. The Pentagon later started paying at the least a part of the price of the service. However as a result of Starlink is a business product reasonably than a conventional protection contractor, Mr. Musk is ready to make selections that might not be aligned with U.S. pursuits, analysts have stated.

Ukraine has no different to his satellite tv for pc community, probably giving him monumental energy over the course of the conflict, simply because the U.S. authorities has no different to SpaceX for a few of its efforts to launch satellites and other people into orbit. Ukraine has consulted different satellite tv for pc web suppliers, however no different providers come near Starlink’s attain.

Russia makes use of its ships to launch cruise missiles at Ukraine, typically at civilian targets, and a few Ukrainians insisted on Friday that an assault on the Black Sea fleet was little greater than an act of self-defense.

Mykhailo Podolyak, a prime adviser to President Volodymyr Zelensky, accused Mr. Musk of enabling Russian aggression. Due to Mr. Musk’s resolution, “civilians, kids are being killed,” he wrote on X on Thursday. “That is the worth of a cocktail of ignorance and large ego.”

As way back as February, Mr. Musk stated that his firm wouldn’t permit use of Starlink for long-range strikes by Ukraine, and a SpaceX govt stated that Starlink had taken steps to curtail Ukraine’s use of the know-how to regulate drones, infuriating Ukrainian officers.

Some subtle drones depend on satellite tv for pc hyperlinks for navigation, both autonomously or steered by a distant operator. With out that, the drones used within the tried Sevastopol assault “washed ashore harmlessly,” Mr. Isaacson wrote.

The e book quotes Mr. Musk as saying: “I believe if the Ukrainian assaults had succeeded in sinking the Russian fleet, it could have been like a mini Pearl Harbor and led to a serious escalation. We didn’t need to be part of that.”

In July, The Instances reported on Mr. Musk’s refusal to permit the service to work close to Crimea, and the broader challenges Ukrainian officers had been going through due to the nation’s dependence on Starlink.

Ukrainian troops use Starlink to speak on encrypted messaging apps like Sign, to ship one another dwell drone movies, to run a Ukrainian networked battlefield consciousness app known as Delta, and to unwind of their down time, searching the web and speaking to family members.

On the Ukrainian aspect, the diminutive Starlink antennas, draped in camouflage nets, cables snaking again to a battery and web router, are present in forests and fields, mounted on the roofs of vans or propped up on sidewalks in frontline villages.

The system has elevated the lethality of Ukrainian artillery strikes. Earlier than Starlink turned up, spotters with binoculars or flying drones would radio coordinates to a commander, who would resolve whether or not to strike, then radio an artillery unit.

With Starlink, artillery groups, commanders and drone pilots can all watch video feeds concurrently whereas chatting on-line, slicing the time from discovering a goal to hitting it from practically 20 minutes to a minute or so, troopers have stated in interviews.

“Starlink is certainly the blood of our complete communication infrastructure now,” Mykhailo Fedorov, Ukraine’s digital minister, instructed The Instances in a current interview.