War in Ukraine
The Washington PostDemocracy Dies in Darkness
Foreign Policy

Musk refused to allow Ukraine’s military to use Starlink to attack Russian fleet

The 2022 incident underscores how critical SpaceX has become to multiple governments around the globe, including the United States

By
and 
Updated September 11, 2023 at 2:00 p.m. EDT|Published September 7, 2023 at 3:06 p.m. EDT
SpaceX founder Elon Musk celebrates after the launch of NASA astronauts to the International Space Station in 2020. (Jonathan Newton/The Washington Post)
9 min
correction

An earlier version of this article incorrectly reported that Elon Musk cut off Starlink service to Ukraine's military as it was attacking the Russian fleet in Crimea last year, based on a new biography of Musk by historian and journalist Walter Isaacson. Isaacson has since said that the account in his book is wrong, and that Musk had never enabled Starlink service within 100 kilometers of the Crimean coast. When the Ukrainians asked that he turn it on to enable their attack, Musk refused, Isaacson now says. This article has been updated to reflect that change.

SpaceX refused to allow Ukraine to use its Starlink satellite internet service last year to guide submarine drones in an attack on the Russian Black Sea Fleet, according to a new biography of SpaceX founder Elon Musk.

The incident underscores how dependent multiple governments have become on a man who controls both a dominant means of high-speed communication and a major platform for public discourse, X. Musk bought X, then known as Twitter, last year, after building SpaceX into a Washington powerhouse.