Kinzinger Points Finger At Elon Musk As Ukrainian Forces Claim “Catastrophic” Starlink Outages

Elon Musk when sparring earlier this week with detractors on Twitter over his Russia-Ukraine peace poll said that he personally lost more than $80 million helping connect Ukrainians to the internet after donating Starlinks to the country amid the Russian invasion. The systems are also used by Ukraine’s military in front line positions. 

Now there’s fresh scrutiny being placed on the billionaire entrepreneur after reports surfaced Friday that there have been “catastrophic” outages, based on the claims of Ukrainian officials. “Ukrainian troops have reported outages of their Starlink communication devices on the frontline, hindering efforts to liberate territory from Russian forces, according to Ukrainian officials and soldiers,” FT is reporting.

“Thousands of Starlink terminals, made by Elon Musk-owned SpaceX, were purchased by the US government and crowdfunded by donors to help Ukrainian troops operate drones, receive vital intelligence updates and communicate with each other in areas where there are no other secure networks,” FT reviews. Importantly the outages reportedly occurred in regions crucial to the ongoing Ukrainian counteroffensive in places like Karkhiv, Donets, Luhansk, as well as near Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions.

But then there’s also the reality to consider of a cutting edge satellite web system being utilized in the middle of a war-torn country amid active invasion by a superpower, inevitably suffering bouts of short term glitches. It’s also as yet unclear the effectiveness of Russian signal-jamming tools, including the possibility of electromagnetic warfare. 

Well-known Republican hawk Adam Kinzinger immediately upon the claims of faulty Starlinks emerging from Ukrainian sources demanded an investigation into Musk, calling it “a national security issue”.

The accusatory tweet strongly suggests the Illinois Congressman thinks there’s some level of intentional malfeasance related to the Strarlink systems on the part of the SpaceX and Tesla CEO.

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

The timing couldn’t be more curious given the FT report underscores the Starlinks had suffered failures starting “weeks” ago – and yet insinuations against Musk are suddenly popping up alongside these new reports. “Another Kyiv official said the connection failures were widespread and prompted panicked calls from soldiers to helplines,” FT detailed. “Both Ukrainian officials said the problems occurred when soldiers liberated territory from Russia and moved past the frontline.”

And as it so happens, as we detailed days ago, Musk has been getting slammed for expressing ‘wrongthink’ on the Ukraine war. Musk’s peace poll from Monday, for which he was told to “f**k off” by Ukraine’s ambassador to Germany Andrij Melnyk, even led to him being mocked and denounced by President Volodymyr Zelensky.

Very quickly, a mainstream media narrative solidified of “hero” Zelensky vs. “pro-Putin” Elon Musk. This despite Musk emphasizing that he is interested in seeking peace at all costs because “a possible, albeit unlikely, outcome from this conflict is nuclear war.” 

Starlink “crucial as a secure form of communication on the battlefield, a soldier says … Ignore [Musk’s] tweets, he argues: “Starlink is our oxygen … If we tell Musk [to] piss off and take his Starlinks with him, our army would collapse into chaos.” https://t.co/80NazM5FoT

— Shashank Joshi (@shashj) October 7, 2022

And yet throughout this week blue-check mark gatekeepers, journalists, bots, pundits and even government officials have pounced, seeking to paint Musk as a pro-Kremlin stooge (and thus a “traitor” – as Rep. Kinzinger’s tweet also insinuates). Now to end the week, we suddenly have demands that Musk be investigated over a “national security issue”… very, very curious timing indeed.