Violation of U.S. sanctions: Musk reveals reason for denying Starlink access near Crimea

He wrote about this on his X account.

According to the businessman, in 2022, his company received a request from the Ukrainian government in the middle of the night to activate Starlink in Crimea within a few hours. At the same time, they didn't receive any permission from the U.S. government to circumvent sanctions.

Musk said that by complying with Ukraine's request, his company would be committing a criminal violation of American law. He also recalled that Starlink is a commercial system, not a military system.

“Use of Starlink for communications, including military communications, is fine, just like the military uses the Internet in general, but if we deliberately engage in explicit acts of war, then we are making Starlink a military system and other countries have every right to shoot down our satellites,” Musk wrote.

Starlink disconnection scandal in Crimea

Writer Walter Isaacson wrote about the Starlink shutdown in his biography of Elon Musk in 2023. According to him, the businessman was afraid that the Ukrainian Armed Forces would use the technology to strike at the Russian Black Sea Fleet.

Musk, in turn, said that he did not disconnect Starlink in Crimea - he rejected Ukraine's request to connect it.

“There was an emergency request from government authorities to activate Starlink all the way to Sevastopol. The obvious intent being to sink most of the Russian fleet at anchor. If I had agreed to their request, then SpaceX would be explicitly complicit in a major act of war and conflict escalation,” he wrote.

Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to the head of Ukraine's President’s Office, called Musk's actions a mixture of ignorance and a big ego, which resulted in numerous human casualties.

The U.S. Senate demanded an investigation into SpaceX after it admitted that it had blocked Ukraine's Starlink satellite internet service in Crimea. Musk himself said he did not consider himself a traitor over the incident.

It is worth noting that this is not the first scandal involving Musk. Last year, his company SpaceX informed the Pentagon that it refused to finance Starlink satellite communications services in Ukraine. Eventually, the U.S. took over the costs.