The magnate of South African origin and co-founder of Tesla Elon Musk said this Friday, October 14, that his company SpaceX is not in a position to finance “indefinitely” the Starlink internet service in Ukraine.
Nor can you ship several thousand extra terminals at your own expense without a state contribution.
Musk’s statements, made on the social network Twitter, came after a CNN news article suggested that the aerospace company he leads he had asked the US Department of Defense to pay for those donations.
Musk, with these statements, once again infuriated the Ukrainians. A few days ago, he angered the same people by making a proposal to end the war with Russia by giving up some of their territories.
“SpaceX is not asking to recover the expenses of the donations that we have already made, but neither can we finance this system indefinitely and continue sending several thousand more terminals that have a data usage up to 100 times higher than that of households. It’s not reasonable at all,” Musk wrote in the Twitter post.
SpaceX is not asking to recover past expenses, but also cannot fund the existing system indefinitely *and* send several thousand more terminals that have data usage up to 100X greater than typical households. This is unreasonable.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 14, 2022
Musk says he can no longer sustain Starlink service in Ukraine without help
The co-founding tycoon of Tesla said that Starlink spends around 20 million dollars per month to support satellite internet service in Ukraine.
A few weeks ago, he had said that SpaceX had already invested more than 80 million dollars to enable and equip Starlink in Ukraine.
CNN had reported this Thursday that SpaceX sent a letter to the United States Department of Defense explaining that it could no longer continue financing the Starlink service in Ukraine.
He also told him that he should deactivate it, unless the United States military helped the company with several million dollars a month.
Musk activated Starlink in Ukraine in February 2022, following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, when internet services were disrupted due to the conflict.
Since then, SpaceX has provided Ukraine with thousands of receiving terminals for free.
According to Ukrainian Deputy Minister Mikhailo Fedorov, Starlink’s service helped restore power and communications infrastructure in some of the country’s most critical areas after attacks by Russian troops.
Musk, who at the time was highly praised in Ukraine for the support, became the target of criticism for the “peace project” he launched on Twitter in the form of a poll.
The proposal told Ukraine to definitively cede the Crimean region to Russia, to hold new referendums under UN control to decide the fate of the three territories now controlled by Russia, and for Ukraine to accept the vote.
From Ukraine they told him that that country will never agree to cede lands taken by force.
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