{"id":1267566,"date":"2025-07-25T18:14:24","date_gmt":"2025-07-25T15:14:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/prm.ua\/musk-turned-off-starlink-over-ukraine-during-counteroffensive-in-kherson-region\/"},"modified":"2025-07-25T18:14:24","modified_gmt":"2025-07-25T15:14:24","slug":"musk-turned-off-starlink-over-ukraine-during-counteroffensive-in-kherson-region","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/prm.ua\/en\/musk-turned-off-starlink-over-ukraine-during-counteroffensive-in-kherson-region\/","title":{"rendered":"Musk turned off Starlink over Ukraine during counteroffensive in Kherson region"},"content":{"rendered":"

In 2022, American billionaire Elon Musk gave the order to turn off Starlink satellite terminals over part of the occupied territory of Ukraine, including Kherson, then controlled by Russia.<\/strong><\/p>\n

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This is stated in an investigation by Reuters<\/a> .<\/p>\n

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According to three sources familiar with the matter, Musk personally ordered a senior SpaceX engineer to shut down Starlink coverage in several regions of Ukraine. The decision resulted in the loss of communications at least at hundreds of terminals, particularly in the Kherson and Donetsk regions.<\/p>\n

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Military and advisors in the Ukrainian Armed Forces confirmed that they lost contact at a critical moment when a counteroffensive was planned. Therefore, Ukrainian forces failed to effectively coordinate their actions and encircle Russian positions, in particular in the Beryslav area of the Kherson region.<\/p>\n

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Musk appeared to be motivated by concerns that a rapid success of the Ukrainian offensive could lead to a nuclear escalation by Russia, the people said. Former White House officials interviewed by Reuters also confirmed that similar concerns existed within the US administration.<\/p>\n

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After the information was published, Musk responded on X (formerly Twitter), stating that “we would never do that,” but did not specifically deny the claims about the order.<\/p>\n

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Starlink is still widely used by the Ukrainian military, but the government is actively looking for alternatives in case of a blackout. According to a senior Ukrainian official, Kyiv does not want to be dependent on just one private company.<\/p>\n

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This is the first documented case of Elon Musk directly intervening in a military conflict through control of communications infrastructure, which, according to Reuters, “allowed him to take the outcome of the war into his own hands.”<\/p>\n

By the way, the founder of SpaceX, Elon Musk, said that satellite Internet for Starlink terminals in Ukraine would not have been disconnected even if the Pentagon had refused to finance it.<\/a><\/p>\n

Earlier, SpaceX informed the US Department of Defense that it would no longer be able to pay for the operation of the Starlink satellite communications system<\/a> in Ukraine.<\/p>\n

In this regard , the Pentagon did not rule out the involvement of other satellite communications operators with Starlink stations, and not just SpaceX, to work in Ukraine<\/a> .<\/p>\n

However, Musk subsequently decided not to exclude Ukraine from free use of Starlink<\/a> .<\/p>\n

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Also follow “Pryamy”<\/strong> on Facebook<\/a> , Twitter<\/a> , Telegram<\/a> and Instagram.<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In 2022, American billionaire Elon Musk gave the order to turn off Starlink satellite terminals over part of the occupied territory of Ukraine, including Kherson, then controlled by Russia. This is stated in an investigation by Reuters . According to three sources familiar with the matter, Musk personally ordered a senior SpaceX engineer to shut […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":1189611,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[76871,76872,76874,76875],"class_list":["post-1267566","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-2","category-news-feed","category-war","category-other-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/prm.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1267566","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/prm.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/prm.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/prm.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/prm.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1267566"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/prm.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1267566\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/prm.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1189611"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/prm.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1267566"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/prm.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1267566"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}