Reports Of Starlink Outages In Ukraine Fuel Speculation That Elon Musk Is Playing Petty, Inflaming Heated Discourse Online

A few days ago, Elon Musk publicly tweeted what he thought would be a good plan to enact a ceasefire in the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine, which was immediately met with pushback and people trying to label Musk a Russian agent. When his decision to give the Ukrainian people access to Starlink (his satellite communications network) to aid in the war effort was brought up during this, many lambasted that as being "ineffective" and not really him being helpful.

Now, mere days after those accusations went out, the Starlink system has now reportedly gone down in several parts of Ukraine, leading to catastrophe as Ukrainian soldiers on the front lines have reportedly found themselves without communications abilities.

The fact that @elonmusk could be attacked as “pro-Russian” merely for suggesting a possible peace deal -- even though he gave Starlink to the Ukrainian war effort -- shows how warped and intolerant the public conversation has become.

— David Sacks (@DavidSacks) October 3, 2022

Just for those who may be a little confused: Elon Musk did not generously donate his Starlink satellite internet to Ukraine. The Biden administration had to pay him for it.

— Andrea Junker (@Strandjunker) October 4, 2022

NEW: Ukraine troops reported outages of Starlink devices on frontline, hindering efforts to liberate territory from Russian forces, Ukrainian officials & soldiers told us.My first FT</a> byline, with star squad <a href="https://twitter.com/MehulAtLarge?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">MehulAtLarge, @felschwartz, Roman Olearchyk. https://t.co/kFLfDNXkWj

— Christopher Miller (@ChristopherJM) October 7, 2022

Evidently the Starlink system is down over the front lines of Ukraine. @elonmusk should make a statement about this, or, this should be investigated. This is a national security issue

— Adam Kinzinger🇺🇦🇺🇸✌️ (@AdamKinzinger) October 7, 2022

Due to the timing of these outages, and what was said previously about Starlink in Ukraine, as well as accusations of Musk being Russian-aligned, it didn't take long for some on social media to suggest that Musk had something to do with this, supposedly as part of some petty play on making people be aware that he was impactful in the Ukraine war.

This recent bout of speculation and controversy has led to multiple people asking for him to be investigated or directly calling on others to try and put pressure on Musk, with some even going as far as to suggest that Starlink should be taken off his hands for "national security" reasons.

BREAKING: Ukrainian troops suffer "catastrophic" loss of communication as the Starlink communication system designed by right-wing billionaire Elon Musk suffers outages -- just days after Musk voiced opinions that were interpreted as pro-Russian. RT IF YOU DON'T TRUST ELON!

— Occupy Democrats (@OccupyDemocrats) October 7, 2022

Hey elonmusk</a>. Is it true that <a href="https://twitter.com/SpaceX?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">SpaceX has turned off Starlink coverage in some of the Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine?

— Dmitri Alperovitch (@DAlperovitch) October 6, 2022

Elon Musk was never Pro-Ukraine! Look how he defended Russia state TV, right after the invasion! He "donated" badly needed Starlink terminals and waited for Ukrainians to be fully dependent on them before to reveal himself as a Vatnik! It was all about PR!https://t.co/Oy3BKvDWts pic.twitter.com/zjXcSlokw5

— thegoodphil (@thegoodphil) October 6, 2022

Yesterday, Russia was directly requesting Elon to disable Starlink over Ukraine. Now it is mysteriously not working. https://t.co/EKn5lSEfzM

— Osbourne Cox (@Osborne__Cox) October 7, 2022

It's currently unknown why Starlink is experiencing issues exactly, but according to Roman Sinicyn (a coordinator at the Serhiy Prytula Charity that donates Starlink systems to Ukraine), the problem is purportedly somehow related to SpaceX attempting to prevent its misuse by Russians.