WAR IN THE BLACK SEA
Jake Epstein, Chris Panella
Thu, September 14, 2023
BlackSky imagery captured the damage caused by a Ukrainian cruise missile attack on the Sevastopol Shipyard dry docks in Russia occupied Crimea on September 13, 2023.Courtesy of BlackSky
Ukraine carried out a massive attack Wednesday on a Russian shipyard in Crimea's Sevastopol.
The cruise missile strikes appear to be part of Kyiv's effort to weaken Russia's grip on the strategic naval base by diminishing its usefulness.
The attack also deals a harsh blow to the logistics and operations of Moscow's Black Sea Fleet.
Russia's Black Sea Fleet has relied heavily on a strategic naval base and shipyard located on the occupied Crimean peninsula to help sustain its invasion of Ukraine, but a recent attack could jeopardize operations.
Ukrainian forces bombarded the port in Sevastopol this week with cruise missiles, damaging two ships and some of the surrounding facilities. It is the latest demonstration of Kyiv's longstanding effort to expel Russian forces from a prized naval base. Experts say the attack on the shipyard also dealt a harsh blow to Russia's maritime logistics, performance, and survivability in the Black Sea, as Moscow lacks the capacity to effectively service its navy elsewhere in the region.
"This attack is a major success for Ukraine," Michael Petersen, the director of the Russia Maritime Studies Institute at the US Naval War College, told Insider. "It's another blow to Russian seaborne logistics operations."
In a pre-dawn attack on Wednesday, Ukraine's air force fired 10 cruise missiles — which observers speculated were Western-made Storm Shadow/ SCALP-EG long-range cruise missiles — at the shipyard in Sevastopol. Russia's defense ministry said in a Telegram statement, the details of which have not been independently verified, that its air-defense systems managed to down seven of the missiles. The missiles that made it through inflicted damage on the landing vessel Minsk and the attack submarine Rostov-on-Don, which were both undergoing repairs. The ministry also said it destroyed three sea drones launched by Ukraine.
After the strikes, the Ukrainian air force thanked its pilots for what it said was "excellent combat work" while a top official in Kyiv called the strike on Sevastopol a "professional and meaningful" statement.
Satellite imagery obtained by Insider captured the shipyard before and after the attack, showing clear damage to the repair facility. The extent is unclear, although some videos published to social media on Thursday show significant destruction. If the damage to the base is severe enough, it may impair the Black Sea Fleet's readiness. The loss here could be more than a couple of warships.
BlackSky imagery captured work being done at the Sevastopol Shipyard dry docks in Russian-occupied Crimea on September 12, 2023.Courtesy of BlackSky
"The apparent destruction of the two vessels will likely render the dry dock inoperable until Russian forces can clear the debris, which may take a significant amount of time," experts at the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), a Washington-based think tank, wrote in a Wednesday analysis. They added that any damage to the Black Sea Fleet's main repair facilities "will likely have reverberating impacts in the event of further Ukrainian strikes on Russian naval assets," which are becoming more regular targets for the Ukrainians.
'Potentially a major strategic blow'
Sevastopol is the longstanding headquarters of the Russian Black Sea Fleet and was a key part of the Crimea peninsula that Moscow illegally annexed in 2014. The shipyard there is home to a majority of the fleet's repair and logistics infrastructure, making it crucial in helping Russia maintain its vessels, which have been responsible for countless devastating missile strikes on Ukrainian cities and infrastructure since the full-scale invasion began in February 2022.
Beyond Sevastopol, the Black Sea Fleet doesn't have many alternative options when it comes to repairs and upgrades. Russia's shipbuilding sector has long been plagued with issues, and the problems have only worsened since Moscow invaded Ukraine last year, thanks to Western sanctions and previous Ukrainian attacks on Sevastopol — which Kyiv has targeted multiple times — and on assets and positions around the Black Sea.
Petersen, an expert on Russian naval operations and strategy, said Russia could use floating dry docks in the port city of Novorossiysk, which has also been targeted in the past by Ukrainian sea drones, but these facilities may be overwhelmed by backlogs, making any facility losses at Sevastopol a problem. He said that the attack on Sevastopol "is potentially a major strategic blow" to the Russians.
View of a damaged Russian ship following a Ukrainian missile attack on Sevastopol, Crimea September 13, 2023 in this social media image.Crimean Wind via Telegram via REUTERS
"Russia just doesn't have enough dry docks and floating dry docks to service and repair its navy and its fleet of civilian vessels," Petersen said. "If the dry dock is severely damaged and needs repairs itself, the ship maintenance and repair schedule will be delayed worse than it has been already in the past few years."
Petersen said the strikes could also have an impact on Russia's naval headquarters and shipyard operations by reducing the willingness of headquarters staff and yard workers to go into work. Indeed, Russian state media reported that two dozen people were injured in Wednesday's attack. But still, he said "it would be a major political defeat to fully relocate the fleet headquarters, and it's almost impossible to fully relocate the repair infrastructure at the base."
Ben Hodges, a retired lieutenant general and former commander of US Army Europe, said attacking the Sevastopol shipyard highlights the "sophistication" of the Ukrainian military's attack planning. Maintenance facilities are high-value targets to pursue, he noted, because losses make it difficult for the enemy to keep ships "operating at peak effectiveness" for extended periods of time.
"You can sink ships, and eventually if you were able to sink them all, obviously that's good," Hodges told Insider. "But in this case, to destroy — or severely damage — a maintenance facility, it has a much more significant longer-term effect on the ability of Russian forces to continue to do things."
Raising the cost for Moscow
The Sevastopol strikes came on the heels of several other recent high-profile Ukrainian hits on strategic Russian targets in and around Crimea. These included the destruction of a formidable air-defense systems, a daring amphibious raid, sea drone attacks on a key bridge, and the capture of oil drilling platforms that were seized by Russia years ago and used for what Kyiv asserted was "military purposes."
All of these actions are part of a lengthy pressure campaign designed to make Crimea — which Kyiv has vowed to liberate from Russian occupation — "untenable" for Moscow's forces, Hodges told Insider. The attacks, he said, are one aspect of Ukraine's larger and multi-domain counteroffensive effort, which also includes the Ukrainian military's fight against Russia's defensive lines in the eastern and southern regions.
"At the operational level of war, it appears that part of Ukraine's strategy is to impose cost on Black Sea Fleet operations. The logic appears to be that if the Black Sea Fleet wishes to operate out of Sevastopol, then it will pay a heavy price to do so," Petersen said. "At the strategic level of war, the goal of course is to evict Russia from Crimea altogether. These operational and strategic goals are nested."
"One way to evict the Black Sea Fleet from Sevastopol is to raise the cost to such levels that Moscow decides that it can't or doesn't want to pay it anymore and withdraws the fleet," he said. Russia previously relocated some of its ships from Sevastopol to Novorossiysk after a naval drone attack last fall, and now new attacks are threatening vessels in maintenance and key facilities.
Despite these efforts to deny the Russians safe harbor and drive the Black Sea Fleet from Sevastopol, Petersen cautioned that "the chances of this happening without extraordinary Ukrainian success on the ground are vanishingly small."
Russian navy vessels near the Black Sea port of Sevastopol in Crimea on February 16, 2022.REUTERS/Alexey Pavlishak
It remains to be seen what specific long-term effects on the Black Sea Fleet arise in the aftermath of the Sevastopol strikes. Petersen hailed the attack as successful for Ukraine, and compared its military significance to when Kyiv's forces sank the guided-missile cruiser Moskva with anti-ship missiles in April 2022.
Damage to the landing vessel Minsk reduces Moscow's military sea-lift capabilities, while damage to the attack submarine Rostov-on-Don potentially disables — at least temporarily — a powerful missile-firing and mine-laying vessel that Ukraine had no way of locating while it was at sea, he said, adding that "if the dry dock is also damaged, that's an impressive three-in-one attack."
Jake Epstein
Updated Thu, September 14, 2023
BlackSky imagery captured the damage caused by a Ukrainian cruise missile attack on the Sevastopol Shipyard dry docks in Russia occupied Crimea on September 13, 2023.Courtesy of BlackSky
Ukraine on Wednesday launched a huge missile strike on a Russian naval facility in occupied Crimea.
The cruise missile attack on the shipyard in Sevastopol left two of Moscow's vessels damaged.
A former US Army general said the strikes are a key to making Crimea indefensible for Russia.
Ukrainian forces carried out a massive missile attack on a strategic Russian naval shipyard in the occupied Crimean peninsula early Wednesday morning, damaging two vessels in what an official in Kyiv called a "professional and meaningful" statement.
The strikes on the Black Sea port city of Sevastopol, which were the results of long-range cruise missiles, marked the latest Ukrainian attacks on Russian positions and assets in and around Crimea, which Kyiv has vowed to liberate from nearly a decade of Russian occupation. These operations are part of a lengthy pressure campaign designed to isolate Crimea and make it "untenable" for Russian forces to stay there, a retired US Army general said.
"This is all orchestrated as part of a sophisticated, multi-domain counteroffensive," Ben Hodges, a retired lieutenant general and former commander of US Army Europe, told Insider.
Smoke rises from the shipyard that was reportedly hit by Ukrainian missile attack in Sevastopol, Crimea, in this still image from video taken September 13, 2023.REUTERS TV via REUTERS
Ukrainian aircraft fired 10 cruise missiles at the Russian shipyard in Sevastopol, located on the southwestern edge of Crimea, in the pre-dawn attack on Wednesday, according to a statement from Russia's defense ministry that was published to Telegram. It said air-defense systems managed to shoot down seven of the missiles, but the ones that got through inflicted damage on two ships — reportedly a landing vessel and a submarine — that were under repair.
BlackSky imagery captured work being done at the Sevastopol Shipyard dry docks in Russian-occupied Crimea on September 12, 2023.Courtesy of BlackSky
BlackSky imagery captured the damage caused by a Ukrainian cruise missile attack on the Sevastopol Shipyard dry docks in Russia occupied Crimea on September 13, 2023.Courtesy of BlackSky
Sevastopol is the headquarters of Russia's Black Sea Fleet, and the shipyard there is crucial in helping Moscow build and maintain its vessels. After the massive attack — which some observers speculated was the result of UK-provided Storm Shadow or French-provided SCALP-EG long-range cruise missiles — Ukraine's air force thanked its pilots for what it called "excellent combat work" and alluded to more strikes in the future.
"The demilitarization of the #Russian Black Sea fleet is a real long-term guarantee of security for regional trade routes and the 'grain corridor,'" Mykhailo Podolyak, an advisor to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, posted to social media on Wednesday.
His remarks were an apparent reference to increasing tensions around the Black Sea and Russia's threats to civilian merchant vessels after Moscow withdrew from the crucial Black Sea grain deal. Podolyak said attacks on the Black Sea fleet are a critical way to respond to Russian aggression in the region.
"The way to do this is to build up the capacity of the Armed Forces of #Ukraine, including by expanding the range of weapons," he added. "We can already see the results of this in #Sevastopol. A professional and meaningful 'statement.'"
A landing ship and a Russian submarine on fire in Sevastopol’s shipyard seen in a photo shared on September 13, 2023, by investigative outlet Rucrimal Info on their Telegram account.Telegram/@ЧК-ОГПУ
Wednesday's missile strikes on Sevastopol are the latest in a string of high-profile Ukrainian attacks putting pressure on Russia in and around the Crimean peninsula.
Last month, Ukraine's military intelligence agency said it destroyed one of Russia's prized S-400 air-defense systems on the westernmost point of the peninsula, and the following day, it said that its forces carried out a daring amphibious raid in the same area, which is where Russia has stationed some sophisticated radar systems. Weeks before that, exploding drone boats attacked a key Russian bridge to Crimea on the eastern side.
And earlier this week, Kyiv announced that its special forces recently retook control of the Boika Towers, oil drilling platforms located off the Crimean coast that were seized by Russia in 2015 after it illegally annexed the peninsula the year before. The Ukrainian defense ministry said the platforms had been used for "military purposes" ever since they were captured.
n this handout photo released by the Governor of Sevastopol Mikhail Razvozhaev telegram channel on Wednesday, Sept. 13, 2023, Razvozhaev speaks on the mobile phone as smoke and flame rise from a burning Sevastopol Shipyard in Crimea.Sevastopol Governor Mikhail Razvozhaev telegram channel via AP
These recent operations around Crimea, including the latest Sevastopol strikes, are not random, Hodges, the retired US Army general, told Insider, but rather part of Ukraine's larger counteroffensive effort.
The three-month-long offensive has consisted of attempts by Kyiv to advance past Russia's formidable defensive lines and fortifications, built along the sprawling front line that stretches across Russian-occupied territory in eastern and southern Ukraine. These defensive lines include minefields, anti-vehicle ditches, dragon's teeth obstacles to prevent heavy armor from advancing, and trenches. While this fighting has been a defining aspect of the counteroffensive, the bigger picture here is a multi-faceted campaign playing out across several different domains — including in Crimea.
"The counteroffensive is not just Ukrainian ground forces trying to break through Russian trenches and minefields. That's only a part of it," Hodges said. "The counteroffensive is intended to first isolate ... Crimea and then make it untenable for Russian forces."
Ukraine has been leveraging its long-range precision strike capabilities — which consists of a limited arsenal of Storm Shadow/SCALP-EG missiles — and innovative drone usage to launch attacks against targets deep in Russian-held territory. Unmanned attacks on Moscow have greatly increased in frequency, and Kyiv has also managed to carry out several high-profile hits on airbases within Russia's internationally recognized territory, damaging and destroying various Russian aircraft, including airlifters and bombers.
"What we're seeing is pressure being applied against the very fragile Russian General Staff," Hodges said.
Increasingly regular Ukrainian attacks on Russian territory, inside occupied land, and around the Black Sea has exposed serious shortcomings in Moscow's force protection and air-defense capabilities, raising questions about its ability to actually safeguard its most vulnerable bases and assets. According to Western intelligence, Russia has sought out several alternative solutions to this problem, like building civilian volunteer patrols or tinkering with its network of air-defense systems. Russia has also been spotted putting tires on its aircraft.
Meanwhile, officials in Kyiv have continued to press their Western military backers for more long-range weapons, including the US-made Army Tactical Missile System, or ATACMS. Washington is reportedly considering sending Ukraine these missiles, which would give Kyiv a significant firepower boost and threaten Russia's vulnerable positions far beyond the front lines.
And while the long-term impact of the Sevastopol strikes remain to be seen, Hodges noted that it's important for Ukraine to keep up the pressure on Russia's Black Sea fleet, which is responsible for missile strikes on Ukrainian cities and infrastructure that have killed and injured scores of civilians. By doing this — and stripping Moscow of maintenance or refueling facilities — Kyiv will force Russian commanders to rethink keeping their ships in Crimea. Ukraine has also been taking aim at ships operating in the Black Sea, stepping up the pressure further.
"It's showing how vulnerable the Russians are in Crimea," Hodges said of the Sevastopol strikes. "People should believe that the Ukrainians are going to keep coming after Crimea because it is the decisive terrain of this war, and it's not something that can just be traded away 'for the sake of peace.' They're not going to stop."
Strike on Russian air defences leaves Crimea force ‘almost defenceless’
Joe Barnes
Thu, September 14, 2023
Ukraine destroyed one of Russia’s most sophisticated air defence systems in a complex missile and drone strike in occupied Crimea on Thursday, leaving Moscow’s Black Sea Fleet “almost completely defenceless”.
Intelligence sources said the attack, by Kyiv’s SBU security service and navy, struck an S-400 system – worth £1 billion – and an S-300 system in Yevpatoriya, in the west of the Kremlin-held peninsula.
Footage circulated on social media showed a giant fireball illuminating the dawn skies over the city, which is hundreds of miles behind enemy lines.
The Russian defence ministry claimed it had shot down 11 drones and thwarted a separate attack on a naval patrol vessel in the Black Sea.
But Rybar, a pro-Kremlin military channel, described a carefully-curated attack by Ukrainian forces, using drones to expose the air-defence system and exhaust its ammunition stocks before delivering several devastating blows with modified cruise missiles.
“First, 11 aircraft-type drones were launched from the outskirts of Odesa,” the channel reported. “The drones were shot down by crews of the 31st Air Force and Air Defence Division at around 5.30am over Yevpatoriya. At approximately 5.50am, the Ukrainian armed forces struck… with an R-360 Neptune anti-ship missile.”
The strike was later confirmed by Ukrainian intelligence sources, as images appeared online that purportedly showed the charred remains of one of the Russian air defence system’s launcher vehicles.
The whereabouts of the system on the salt lakes of Yevpatoriya was revealed last year by an unsuspecting tourist wearing swimwear who posed for a picture in front of its launcher vehicle.
One source said the drones had been used to disable nearby radar systems, allowing the two Neptune missiles to slip in undetected.
The Neptune, a ground-launched anti-ship missile, was recently developed domestically in Ukraine. It came to prominence in April last year when it was used to sink the Moskva, the flagship of Russia’s Black Sea fleet. It was later engineered to attack ground targets at a range of around 200 miles.
The S-400 system was the second to be destroyed in quick succession after Ukrainian forces publicised a strike on a system stationed at Cape Tarkhankut on Aug 23.
Western officials believe Russia is struggling to replenish its most advanced air defence systems, potentially leaving its forces exposed to future aerial attacks.
Military Informant, a pro-Russian blogger, suggested Kyiv was laying the groundwork to strike targets, including warships docked at Sevastopol, with impunity.
It said: “Apparently, the Ukrainian armed forces are trying to purposefully thin out the air defence of Crimea for unhindered attacks on strategic targets... as well as ships of the Black Sea Fleet, which are almost completely defenceless without ground-based air defence cover.”
Ukraine has ramped up attacks around occupied Crimea, which was illegally annexed by Moscow in 2014, in an attempt to starve Russia’s war machine by degrading its combat capabilities.
Crimea is a critical logistics hub for Russian forces defending Ukraine’s counter-offensive.
On Wednesday, Ukrainian forces used British-donated Storm Shadow air-launched cruise missiles to damage a Russian warship and submarine at a shipyard in Crimea.
- Ukraine just carried out the same kind of strike on Russia's navy that Elon Musk blocked, believing it could start a nuclear war
Tom Porter
Updated Wed, September 13, 2023
Ukraine targeted the Russian navy in Crimea on Tuesday.
It's the same kind of strike Elon Musk sabotaged in 2022, fearing it'd cause nuclear war.
But it appears Musk fell for a Russian bluff, say critics.
Flames engulfed Russian naval ships in a major dockyard in the occupied Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea on Tuesday after a Ukrainian missile attack.
The attack was notable not just as another example of Ukraine's capacity to strike Russia deep behind its front line but also, said critics, because it exposed the falsity of SpaceX founder Elon Musk's reasons for scuppering a similar Ukrainian strike.
The SpaceX CEO last year effectively sabotaged a Ukrainian attack as drones were bearing down on Russian naval vessels in Sevastopol in the early weeks of the conflict, Walter Isaacson said in his new biography about the billionaire.
Musk decided not to activate the Starlink satellites used to guide the drones, fearing the attack could be a new Pearl Harbour that would escalate the conflict and potentially invite a nuclear response from Russia, the biography said.
The incident was a startling indication of the power Musk wields and was the first time it had been said the billionaire directly intervened to prevent a military operation in the conflict.
Was Elon Musk played by Russia?
What's been notably absent in the wake of Tuesday's strike is any sign of the massive escalation from Russia that Musk said he acted to prevent.
In fact, there have been several attacks on Russian vessels in Sevastopol since the incident Isaacson describes, including an October 2022 attack using sea drones, which also didn't provoke a massive Russian response.
In the book, Isaacson describes how when Musk learned that Starlink satellites were being used to guide the drones, he spoke by phone with officials including the Russian ambassador to the US, Anatoly Antonov.
Antonov, Isaacson wrote, persuaded Musk that an attack on Sevastopol would trigger a nuclear response from Russia under the state's military doctrine. Musk said he cut the attack off to prevent a "major act of war and conflict escalation" in a tweet after excerpts of the book were published last week.
Critics say Musk was played by Russia.
"This is a cautionary tale about the arrogance of a billionaire who has come to play a mercurial role in US foreign policy. But it's also a story about fear, seeded and promoted by the Russians, deliberately designed to shape broader Western perceptions of this war," wrote the historian Anne Applebaum in The Atlantic.
Russian President Vladimir Putin and top Kremlin officials have repeatedly menaced Ukraine and the West with the prospect of a nuclear attack.
Putin even suggested when he declared the formal annexation of swaths of east Ukraine in October 2022 that an attack on the territory would be treated as an attack on Russia, suggesting the Kremlin could respond with a nuclear strike.
Yet Ukraine has continued to attack the territory and even seized some of it back from Russia without triggering the nuclear response Putin threatened. Even Ukrainian attacks on Russia itself have not triggered a massive escalation from Russia.
There remains open to Musk the argument that the attack he foiled was on a much bigger scale than Tuesday's and that in the early weeks of the war, the boundaries of escalation were not clearly known.
But for critics, Musk has been among the most successful targets of Russian propaganda and scaremongering.
"Elon Musk acting to stop Ukraine from attacking Russian occupied territory shows him to be, at best, ignorant on war and susceptible to Russian propaganda," tweeted Nicholas Grossman, an international relations professor at the University of Illinois.
SpaceX did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Insider.
Tom Porter
Updated Thu, September 14, 2023
Elon Musk departs following a meeting in the office of US House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), at the US Capitol in Washington, DC, on September 13, 2023.
Elon Musk was challenged by a Sky News reporter on Wednesday.
He was asked whether his "ego and ignorance" had cost Ukrainian lives.
A new biography revealed that Musk stopped a Ukrainian attack on Russia by not activating Starlink satellites.
SpaceX chief Elon Musk was challenged by a reporter on whether his decision to thwart a Ukrainian attack on the Russian navy by not activating Starlink satellites had cost Ukrainian lives.
James Matthews, Sky News' US correspondent, on Tuesday questioned Musk as he left a meeting with the Federal Aviation Authority in Washington, DC.
Musk refused to answer when asked if his "ego and ignorance" had cost Ukrainian lives, or when asked to comment about Russian President Vladimir Putin's description of him as "outstanding."
"Vladimir Putin calls you outstanding, Mr. Musk. Do you appreciate that? What would you call Vladimir Putin? Has your ego and ignorance, sir, cost Ukrainian lives? A senior war official says it has," said Matthews.
Musk is facing criticism after Walter Isaacson, in his new biography of the billionaire, revealed that Musk had halted a Ukrainian attack on the Russian navy in Sevastopol, Crimea, in the early weeks of the Ukraine war.
Musk refused to activate Starlink satellites being used to guide Ukrainian drones to their targets, Isaacson has said, correcting his initial account in which he said Musk had turned them off.
"The war in Ukraine, when no other company or even country could manage to keep communications satellites working, gave him a center-stage opportunity to show his humanitarian instincts while playing superhero," said Isaacson.
"It also showed the complexities of critical military infrastructure being controlled by an often well-intentioned but mercurial private citizen."
Musk in a tweet said if he hadn't stopped the attack "then SpaceX would be explicitly complicit in a major act of war and conflict escalation."
Ukraine has criticized the decision, with Mykhailo Podolyak, an advisor to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, saying that by foiling the attack Musk "allowed this fleet to fire Kalibr missiles at Ukrainian cities", resulting in the deaths of civilians.
The Kremlin has praised it, with Putin describing Musk as an "outstanding person" on Wednesday.
Other critics say Musk's claim the attack would've escalated the conflict was wrong, and have pointed to other attacks Ukrainian attacks on Sevastopol, including one on Tuesday, that have not resulted in a massive Russian retaliation.
Three senators ask DOD if Musk undermined Ukraine by limiting Starlink access
Courtney Kube
Fri, September 15, 2023
Russian Defense Ministry Press Service via AP file
Three Democratic members of the Senate Armed Services Committee are asking Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin for answers about whether Elon Musk or other commercial satellite providers disabled or restricted the Ukrainian military’s access to communication networks and whether the Defense Department has the authority to intervene.
The questions stem from reporting in journalist Walter Isaacson’s biography of Musk, who in addition to his roles at Tesla and the social media platform formerly known as Twitter is also the CEO of SpaceX, which operates the Starlink satellite system. Musk sent Starlink terminals to Ukraine last year after Russia’s invasion to enable Ukraine’s military to communicate digitally.
In his book, however, Isaacson reports that late last year Musk prevented the Ukrainian armed forces from using Starlink satellite communication terminals to mount an attack on Russian ships in Russian-held southern Ukraine.
Initial media reports about the book said Musk disabled the Starlink network near the Crimean Peninsula after conversations with senior Russian officials. After the reports, Musk took to his social media platform, X, formerly known as Twitter, to argue that he did not discontinue Starlink over Crimea but instead refused a request by Ukraine to provide it there.
“The onus is meaningfully different if I refused to act upon a request from Ukraine vs. made a deliberate change to Starlink to thwart Ukraine. At no point did I or anyone at SpaceX promise coverage over Crimea. Moreover, our terms of service clearly prohibit Starlink for offensive military action, as we are a civilian system, so they were again asking for something that was expressly prohibited. SpaceX is building Starshield for the U.S. government, which is similar to, but much smaller than Starlink, as it will not have to handle millions of users. That system will be owned and controlled by the U.S. government,” he wrote.
Isaacson also sent a message on the social media platform, writing: “To clarify on the Starlink issue: the Ukrainians THOUGHT coverage was enabled all the way to Crimea, but it was not. They asked Musk to enable it for their drone sub attack on the Russian fleet. Musk did not enable it."
In a letter sent Friday, Democratic Sens. Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Tammy Duckworth of Illinois asked Austin to clarify what had occurred. “The differing versions of events further highlights the confusion surrounding the circumstances of this reported incident,” they wrote. “The confusion over what actually happened during this Ukrainian attack — and Mr. Musk’s specific role — demands answers.”
Citing media reports about the book, the senators said Musk’s decision provided “de facto protection” to the Russian military, which has continued to launch attacks against civilians and infrastructure and enforced an embargo on grain shipments in the Black Sea.
“The reports raise serious concerns about whether Mr. Musk has personally intervened to undermine a key U.S. partner at a critical juncture,” they wrote, “and if so, how and why he was allowed to do so, and what actions the Department of Defense (DoD) will take or has taken to address these actions and prevent further dangerous meddling, and whether further legislation is needed for DoD to effectively pursue these ends.”
“We are deeply concerned with the ability and willingness of SpaceX to interrupt their service at Mr. Musk’s whim and for the purpose of handcuffing a sovereign country’s self-defense, effectively defending Russian interests.”
In June, the Pentagon said it had signed a contract to pay SpaceX to keep providing Starlink to Ukraine, after Musk threatened to cut off service because of the cost.
The three senators asked Austin to detail any other cases when Starlink or other commercially provided services were disabled or restricted for the Ukrainians since Russia’s invasion and whether the Pentagon was paying for those services, whether anything in the Pentagon’s contracts with the companies prohibits the companies from impeding services and how the Defense Department is working on alternative options to ensure there are more capabilities during times of crisis.
They requested that he provide answers by Oct. 31.
The Democratic chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Jack Reed of Rhode Island, also questioned the role of Musk’s business interests in U.S. national security.
“Serious national security liability issues have been exposed and the committee is engaged on this issue,” Reed said in a statement Thursday. “Neither Elon Musk, nor any private citizen, can have the last word when it comes to U.S. national security. We’ve got to look at the broader satellite markets and the role of government outsourcing, the outsized role Mr. Musk and his company have taken on here, and the Pentagon’s actions and contractual arrangements.”
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