Zelenskyy advisor slams Elon Musk over report that the SpaceX founder blocked Ukraine's access to Starlink satellites: 'Why do some people so desperately want to defend war criminals?'

• A top advisor to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy blasted Elon Musk over a recent report.
• Musk reportedly thwarted a Ukrainian attack on a Russian naval fleet by shutting off his Starlink network.

A top advisor to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy blasted Elon Musk over a report that the SpaceX founder personally ordered his engineers to shut off his Starlink satellites over Crimea, thwarting a Ukrainian attack on a Russian naval fleet last year.

"Sometimes a mistake is much more than just a mistake," Zelenskyy advisor Mykhailo Podolyak said Thursday on X, formerly known as Twitter.

"As a result, civilians, children are being killed. This is the price of a cocktail of ignorance and big ego. However, the question still remains: Why do some people so desperately want to defend war criminals and their desire to commit murder? And do they now realize that they are committing evil and encouraging evil?" Podolyak asked.

Musk acknowledged the matter on his social media site on Thursday, saying that the "Starlink regions in question were not activated. SpaceX did not deactivate anything."

Musk explained there was an "emergency request" from Ukrainian government authorities "to activate Starlink all the way to Sevastopol," a major city and port on the Crimean peninsula.

"The obvious intent being to sink most of the Russian fleet at anchor," Musk continued. "If I had agreed to their request, then SpaceX would be explicitly complicit in a major act of war and conflict escalation."

Musk's decision to not engage his Starlink satellites was first reported by journalist Walter Isaacson in his upcoming biography of the tech billionaire. CNN published an excerpt of that biography on Thursday. Isaacson, who interviewed Musk for the book, says he worried an attack on the Russian fleet would trigger a "mini-Pearl Harbor" and a possible nuclear retaliation by Russia.