Musk: “To hell with it… we’ll just keep funding Ukraine govt for free”
Elon Musk said he will continue to fund Starlink satellites in Ukraine “for free” after a recent standoff with the US Department of Defense over the cost of their deployment. The world’s richest man tweeted “The hell with it … even though Starlink is still losing money & other companies are getting billions of taxpayer $, we’ll just keep funding Ukraine govt for free.” It wasn’t clear if he was sincere or sarcastic, but it appears that the blowback to his earlier course of action may have gotten to the billionaire.
He followed up with a later tweet to a follower saying, “Even so, we should still do good deeds.”
The shift comes a day after Musk threatened to cut financial support for SpaceX’s Starlink satellite internet service in Ukraine, having claimed that the operation had cost his company $80 million so far. The Pentagon had responded by confirming it’s in talks with SpaceX, while adding that the US is looking at other options.
Shutting down Starlink terminals would deny Ukraine a key means of communication in the fight against Russia: in addition to helping Ukraine’s forces on the ground, the terminals have supported infrastructure across the country. Ukraine has 20,000 Starlink terminals, provided evenly by USAID, Poland, the European Union and private companies, according to an Oct. 5 report from state-run news agency Ukrinform that cited Ministry of Digitalization data.
Earlier Musk stated that the amount SpaceX was requesting to give Ukraine a “major battlefield advantage” is less than the cost of one new GPS satellite.
Musk’s reversal prompted some several angry responses from prominent liberals such as Kim Dotcom, who said that “in other words”, Musk “will continue your support for the US proxy war in Ukraine despite your better knowledge that this is a US proxy war and the risk of a nuclear war because of the US proxy war? And we are supposed to believe that you will fix @twitter? How utterly disappointing.”
