9/13/2023
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Are these two countries fighting to reduce the world’s population?
Business InsiderFollow
Elon Musk says Joe Biden and the US government are the ones to blame for the Crimea Starlink debacle, not him
Story by insider@insider.com (Cheryl Teh) •5h
Elon Musk says he’s not the one to blame for the Starlink debacle in Crimea. Chesnot/Getty Images© Chesnot/Getty Images
- Ukrainian officials have slammed Elon Musk for not allowing Ukraine to access Starlink satellites.
- Musk said the US government did not give him the OK to turn on Starlink access in Crimea.
- Musk said he would have given Ukraine access to the satellites if Biden gave the green light.
Elon Musk has been scrambling to defend his decision to block Ukraine’s access to Starlink in 2022 near Crimea — and his latest explanation involves blaming the US government.
Access to Starlink in the territory near Crimea was “turned off” because the US has sanctions against Russia, Musk said. Starlink is not allowed to turn access on in Crimea without government approval, he said.
“If I got a request from the president type of thing — from the American president, to be clear — then I would have turned it on,” Musk said about the use of Starlink in Crimea. “No such request came through.”
Musk made the comments during an episode of “The All-In Podcast” that was uploaded on the Musk-owned X, previously known as Twitter, on September 12.
Musk did not specify who turned Starlink access off, or when exactly it was turned off. He did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Insider sent outside regular business hours.
Throughout the war with Russia, front-line troops in Ukraine have used Starlink — a SpaceX-owned satellite communications network — to stay in touch with their command centers. However, the network being dark over Crimea foiled an attempted Ukrainian drone strike on Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, Walter Isaacson wrote in his new biography of Musk.
Related video: ‘Elon Musk’ author clarifies claim on Ukraine strike (FOX News)
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Ukrainian officials this week slammed Musk for not allowing Ukraine to access Starlink satellites — and have said that Musk, by extension, thwarted the country’s efforts in September 2022 to launch an effective assault on Russian-controlled territory in Crimea.
“Elon rules: someone else’s land, freedom, dignity is not worth someone else’s life. Elon rules whose life is worth what. Elon rules it’s better live on the knees than die standing up,” Olexander Scherba, the ambassador for strategic communications at Ukraine’s foreign affairs ministry, tweeted on September 8.
In the podcast, Musk said he interpreted Ukraine’s request to turn on Starlink satellite access in 2022 as an invitation for the company to “really, proactively, take part in a major act of war.”
Musk also said the use of Starlink in Crimea could have created a “mini Pearl Harbor.”
“But, I think, you have to sort of say, taking the actual example of Pearl Harbor. And say, ‘Well, how did that work out for Japan?’ It didn’t work out well at all,” Musk said. “Because it was a tactical victory, a strategic defeat. It enraged the American public, who sort of, naturally, wanted vengeance for this act.”
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Before and after images show how Russia’s invasion has shattered the city of Bakhmut©AFPTV/AFP via Getty Images
- Before and after images show the devastation in Ukraine’s city of Bakhmut.
- The 10-month battle for the eastern city has been the longest and deadliest in the war in Ukraine.
- Bakhmut was once flush with greenery. Now it’s a gray city littered with skeletal buildings and brown earth.
The Ukrainian city of Bakhmut has been all but completely destroyed. Homes, schools, and businesses have been blown out by months of ceaseless combat and reduced to rubble, and most of the city’s people are long gone. What remains is a scarred landscape where thousands of lives have ended.
Satellite images from Maxar, released May 17, highlight the scale of the destruction caused by the battle for Bakhmut, a city in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk region.
The horrific fight that began last summer is the longest and bloodiest battle in the war in Ukraine. The battle has seen some of the hardest and most intense fighting and tremendous losses, and it’s not over. Neither side is backing away.
The Russian military and Wagner mercenaries began their siege of the city last August — though it faced regular shelling before that — and have been fighting to take control of the city for ten months. The Ukrainian army put up a fierce resistance, but it’s unclear if they can hold out against the Russian assault.
On Sunday, Russian President Vladimir Putin praised Wagner for its fighting in Bakhmut, crediting them with the “liberation” of the ruined city. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy disputed that, with independent observers saying that the fight for control continues, though he conceded that the city exists now “only in our hearts.”
While the city’s ultimate fate remains uncertain, the following images capture how a thriving town of roughly 73,000 people became a war-torn, bloodstained battlefield.
He added that giving Ukraine the capacity to attack Russia, in his opinion, would “result in a mass escalation of hostilities.”
“This would not defeat Russia. It would enrage Russia,” Musk said.
Musk also said he believes Starlink remains the “fundamental communication backbone of the Ukrainian government.”
“It is the only thing that works on the war front, everything else has been jammed by the Russians,” Musk said.
The State Department and the White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment from Insider sent outside regular business hours.
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