According to the biography Elon Musk by Walter Isaacson, Musk was alleged to have ordered engineers to turn off service in the area of the attack due to his concern that Vladimir Putin would retaliate by using nuclear weapons to a Ukrainian attack on Crimea.

CNN quoted an excerpt from the biography which tells how armed submarine drones were approaching their targets when they “lost connectivity and washed ashore harmlessly”.

In the biography, Musk is reported to have said that Ukraine was “going too far” in threatening to inflict a “strategic defeat” on the Kremlin.

While Musk had been reported to threaten to withdraw Starlink communications at various stages of the Russian-Ukraine war, this is the first time it has been alleged that he cut off Ukrainian forces in the middle of a specific operation. The date of the would-be attack was not specified.

The tech billionaire reportedly referred to the attack as a “mini Pearl Harbor”.

Initially agreeing to supply Starlink hardware to Ukraine after Russia’s full-scale invasion, he reportedly had second thoughts after repelled the initial assault and went on a counter-offensive.

Read: Social media platform X to offer video, audio calls: Musk

“Starlink was not meant to be involved in wars. It was so people can watch Netflix and chill and get online for school and do good peaceful things, not drone strikes,” Musk told Isaacson during an interview.

Neither X nor SpaceX replied to requests for comment.

Isaacson also claimed despite a plea by a Ukrainian minister, Musk refused to restore Starlink communications during the submarine drone attack saying Ukraine was “now going too far and inviting strategic defeat”.

“I just want you – the person who is changing the world through technology – to know this,” Mykhailo Fedorov, one of Ukraine’s deputy prime ministers, reportedly told Musk.

He has also been accused of echoing Russian narratives as he suggested that some parts of eastern Ukraine be handed to Russia.

A study by the European Commission found that X under Musk’s ownership had played a significant role in disseminating Russian propaganda about the Ukraine war.