They link to their updated reporting: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/sep/12/elon-musk-biog...

> On Friday, Isaacson tweeted a clarification, writing that “the Ukrainians THOUGHT coverage was enabled all the way to Crimea, but it was not. They asked Musk to enable it for their drone sub attack on the Russian fleet. Musk did not enable it, because he thought, probably correctly, that would cause a major war.”

> On Saturday, Isaacson said that based on conversations with Musk, he “mistakenly” believed that the policy preventing Starlink from being used for an attack on Crimea had been decided on the night of the attempted Ukrainian attack. He added that Musk “now says that the policy had been implemented earlier, but the Ukrainians did not know it, and that night he simply reaffirmed the policy”.

Good catch, I should have looked closer at the retraction link than I did!

In July 2025 Reuters re-upped the claim of the shutdown:

> KYIV - During a pivotal push by Ukraine to retake territory from Russia in late September 2022, Elon Musk gave an order that disrupted the counteroffensive and dented Kyiv’s trust in Starlink, the satellite internet service the billionaire provided early in the war to help Ukraine’s military maintain battlefield connectivity.

> “We have to do this,” Michael Nicolls, the Starlink engineer, told colleagues upon receiving the order, one of these people said. Staffers complied, the three people told Reuters, deactivating at least a hundred Starlink terminals, their hexagon-shaped cells going dark on an internal map of the company’s coverage. The move also affected other areas seized by Russia, including some of Donetsk province further east.

[…]

> After the book was published, Musk denied a shutdown, saying that there had never been coverage in Crimea to begin with. He said he had, rather, rejected a Ukrainian request to provide service ahead of Kyiv’s planned attack. Isaacson later conceded his account was flawed. A spokesperson at Isaacson’s publisher declined to comment or make him available for an interview.

[…]

> As Ukraine’s counterattack intensified, Russian President Vladimir Putin on September 21, 2022, ordered a partial mobilization of reservists, Russia’s first since World War II. He also threatened to use nuclear weapons if Russia’s own “territorial integrity” were at risk. Around this time, Musk engaged in weeks of backchannel conversations with senior officials in the administration of President Joe Biden, according to three former U.S. government officials and one of the people familiar with Musk’s order to stop service. During those conversations, the former White House staffer told Reuters, U.S. intelligence and security officials expressed concern that Putin could follow through on his threats. Musk, this person added, worried too, and asked U.S. officials if they knew where and how Ukraine used Starlink on the battlefield.

> Soon after, he ordered the shutdown.

* https://www.reuters.com/investigations/musk-ordered-shutdown...