Elon Musk is said to have ordered the Starlink outage for the Ukrainian army.

Elon Musk is said to have ordered the Starlink outage for the Ukrainian army First he criticized Zelensky, then his satellite internet was slowly affected: Did the tech billionaire unilaterally enable a Russian wave of attack? On the afternoon of October 14th, Russian jet drones targeted the western Ukrainian city of Lviv, striking a large supermarket. Within minutes, a fire engulfed the warehouse. Six people, employees, and customers died in the inferno, and around a dozen suffered severe burns. While the Russian president Vladimir Putin is solely responsible for the attack, Elon Musk may also be held responsible for the victims. This is because the Ukrainian intercept drones, controlled via satellite, were unable to act against the attack due to intentional signal interruptions on the Starlink internet. In other regions, such as Kyrylivrad, Ukrainian drone defense collapsed, and several residential areas were hit. It is difficult to say how many people lost their lives because the Ukrainian army could only access the network very limitedly for 24 hours while the jamming drones continued for days. However, if what the "Wall Street Journal" writes is true, it was Elon Musk himself who slowed down Starshield, the military version of the satellite internet for the Ukrainian army. Trump is clueless Although the tech billionaire denied any responsibility. Hours after the slowdown became known, Musk wrote on X that usage restrictions would be set by the American military and ultimately by the president. However, according to a source from the "Wall Street Journal," he had explicitly discussed the measure with Donald Trump before the slowdown. This one was clueless and explained to reporters on Monday that he did not know who was responsible for the Starlink slowdown, "but I want to find out." Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth expressed a similar view. "Starlink," he said, "has the ability to make decisions regarding its terms of use." However, the idea that the American military would leave the authority over the use of technology on a battlefield to a tech corporation is absurd. This has not least clarified the feud between the AI giant Anthropic and the White House over the use of artificial intelligence in the American military. Musk probably did not act unilaterally. But he apparently also did not oppose the measure. Rather, it seems he actively supported it, which is also indicated by one of his statements. "Zelensky has gone too far," he wrote four days before the slowdown on X. Earlier, Trump had threatened the Ukrainian president because his attacks on Russian energy facilities had caused high gasoline prices in the USA (and less so the Iran war). He told Zelensky that he could do whatever he wanted in Russia, as long as he did not attack the refineries. "And what does he do? He attacks the diesel facilities. He better stop sooner." The Ukrainian offensive was also weakened Apparently, Trump wants to exert pressure on Zelensky – and Musk is doing it too. On the Ukrainian side, there is talk that American intelligence information was also withheld recently. The slowdown of Starlink fits into this picture. However, it is also conceivable that Trump caused the restriction to weaken the Ukrainian offensive. Although Starlink does not play a direct role in the Ukrainian fighting against energy facilities deep in the Russian hinterland, as the "National Review" writes in reference to a report by the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), the Ukrainian attacks along the front have been significantly impaired. Perhaps, the newspaper speculates, the idea of turning off the satellite internet for the Ukrainians did not come from Musk or the White House – but was brought to Trump by Putin.