Elon Musk Says SpaceX Will Keep Funding Starlink Internet in Ukraine – Elon Musk stated on Saturday that his company would continue to pay for Starlink satellite internet in Ukraine, a day after claiming that the project was losing roughly $20 million per month. “The hell with it,” the world’s richest man wrote on Twitter. “Even though Starlink is still losing money & other companies are getting billions of taxpayer $, we’ll just keep funding the Ukraine govt for free.”
Musk stated on Friday that he thought it was unjust that SpaceX was not subsidized by the US military to operate Starlink in Ukraine, despite the fact that competitors such as Lockheed Martin and Boeing were given billions of dollars to offer resources. After CNN published memos sent from SpaceX to the Pentagon, the US military admitted it was in talks with the billionaire’s company about funding for the satellite internet network.
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“We are not in a position to further donate terminals to Ukraine, or fund the existing terminals for an indefinite period of time,” SpaceX’s director of government sales wrote, in a letter seen by the network. Musk’s tweets followed a series of public spats with Ukrainian leaders, who were enraged by his suggestions that the country pursue peace by acknowledging Russian sovereignty over Crimea, accepting a series of referendums allowing Russia to annex territory, and committing to neutrality in the future.
“I’m trying my hardest to de-escalate this situation and obviously failing,” Musk said in reply to a sympathetic tweet from the Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom, who is currently fighting extradition to the US on charges of money laundering and wire fraud.
While Musk joked that his request for subsidies was in response to Melnyk’s message, tweeting “we’re just following his recommendation,” the letters to the Pentagon were written in September, far before his October engagement in the conflict. Starlink, a low-Earth orbit system of over 3,000 small satellites, has been critical to Ukraine’s communications as it confronts Russia’s invasion.
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According to an updated statistic provided by Musk last week, SpaceX has contributed around 25,000 ground terminals to Ukraine. However, some have protested that the company’s donation represents only a small part of the total number of Starlink terminals in use in the country, the majority of which are purchased and paid for at market rates.
