The United States demands to investigate the Starlink shutdown near Crimea

The United States Congress is to investigate the circumstances of the Starlink satellite communications outage near Crimea, which disrupted Ukraine’s attack on the Russian fleet.

Elizabeth Warren, a Democratic Senator from Massachusetts, stated this, Bloomberg writes.

This request comes after the U.S. media recently reported that last year, Elon Musk blocked Ukraine from accessing Starlink to divert an attack against Russian warships stationed at bases in temporarily occupied Crimea.

“The Congress needs to investigate what happened there and whether we have adequate tools to make sure foreign policy is conducted by the Government and not by one billionaire,” Senator Elizabeth Warren stated.

Musk, who is the CEO of SpaceX, is expected to be among the tech industry executives participating in a private meeting with U.S. Senators at the Capitol on Wednesday, September 13.

Warren, who is a member of the U.S. Senate Committee on Armed Services, said she also wants the U.S. Defense Department to review its relationship with Elon Musk’s company.

In turn, Jack Reed, a Rhode Island Democrat, and Armed Services Committee Chairman, also expressed that he was concerned about the issue given that national governments traditionally control satellites and Presidents were the ones deciding what to do with them.

He pointed out that there was a very positive change when SpaceX lowered the cost of access to space, including for launches in the interest of national security, “but he can’t be the last word when it comes to national security,” Reed said, referring to billionaire Musk.

Previous statements

CNN recently reported that entrepreneur Elon Musk allegedly secretly ordered his engineers to turn off the signal of the Starlink satellite communications network near the coast of Russian-occupied Crimea. He allegedly aimed to prevent the Ukrainian naval drone attack on the ships of the Black Sea Fleet of the Russian Federation in Sevastopol.

Reacting to this information, Musk subsequently claimed that he did not order his specialists to turn off the Starlink satellite network near Crimea, but rejected Ukraine’s request to activate it in this region.

“The response regions in question have not been activated to use Starlink. SpaceX has not deactivated anything,” Musk posted on the X social media (Twitter).

In September 2022, Militarnnyi reported that a military naval drone was discovered near the shore near the Russian naval base in occupied Sevastopol.