US billionaire Elon Musk ordered the deactivation of Starlink satellite coverage over part of Ukraine’s Kherson Oblast during a major counteroffensive in the fall of 2022, Reuters reported on 25 July, citing unnamed sources.

According to three individuals familiar with the matter, Musk instructed a senior SpaceX engineer to shut down coverage in the area near Beryslav, where Ukrainian forces were attempting to encircle Russian troops.

The move reportedly caused front-line units to lose connectivity, disabling drones and disrupting artillery coordination. A Ukrainian military source told Reuters that the outage directly contributed to the failure of the encirclement operation.

Ukrainian forces later liberated Kherson and other settlements on the west bank of the Dnipro River in November 2022, but the immediate impact of the blackout raised alarm among military officials in both Kyiv and Washington.

“To be extremely clear, no matter how much I disagree with the Ukraine policy, Starlink will never turn off its terminals,” he wrote on X on 9 March.

Reuters’ sources claim Musk’s decision stemmed from fears that a successful Ukrainian advance might provoke a Russian nuclear response.

The reporting emerged just a day after Starlink suffered a global outage on 24 July. The company has not disclosed the cause, but the incident renewed concerns about Starlink’s central role in Ukraine’s communications infrastructure during wartime.

Hospitals, schools, and front-line military units across Ukraine rely heavily on the technology.