Source: Steve Jurvetson
Shortly after the outbreak of the war between Russia and Ukraine, Elon Musk quickly responded to the request of the Ukrainian government and activated his satellite internet service – Starlink – and even made sure to send terminals that would enable the connection to the service. In the last week, the issue of the financing of the service appeared, alongside claims of connection problems on behalf of forces on the front line against Russia – and now Elon Musk is responding on the issue.
A lot of money that comes out of the pockets of Musk and SpaceX
At the end of the week, reports surfaced according to which SpaceX, Elon Musk’s company that is responsible for operating the Starlink project, contacted the American government and informed it that it could not continue to finance the operation of the project in Ukraine. According to the reports, the financing of the operation of the project and the sending of the necessary terminals for its operation in Ukraine will cost SpaceX about 124 million dollars by the end of the year (deployment began in March of this year). The cost of running the service will double 2.5 times if Musk continues to pay for the service out of SpaceX’s pocket for the next year to $380 million.
Musk and SpaceX, it was revealed this weekend on CNN, turned to the US Department of Defense and demanded that it take over the financing of the operation of the service and the costs of the terminals in Ukraine – considering the high costs. These reports also come after last week Ukrainian soldiers who are on the front line against Russia announced that the service suffers from connection problems during attacks on Russian forces. Some of these media lapses reportedly had “catastrophic” effects.
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
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 15, 2022
Tries to run away, but stays
Musk, it seems, not only tried to find someone to pay for the service instead of it coming out of his own pocket, but also tried to distance himself from the war in Russia and Ukraine – after he proposed a plan in which Ukraine would transfer territory to Russia in exchange for peace, a plan that was not received with much love. Ukrainian diplomats called him to “go to hell” after this proposal, and even tweeted that SpaceX’s attempt to find funding for Starlink is an attempt to “follow the recommendation” of those diplomats (in this case, the ambassador of Ukraine to Germany, A.A.) and distance himself from the situation.
And after all of this, quite surprisingly, Musk announced last night (Saturday) via Twitter that even though other companies receive large budgets to help Ukraine fight – he will continue to finance Starlink services from his own pocket. “Although Starlink still continues to lose money, while other companies receive billions of taxpayers’ money, we will continue to fund the Ukrainian government,” Musk wrote on Twitter.
Now we will have to wait and see if this move will help him get the funding he wanted from the US Department of Defense, to continue the discussion on the issue. On the other hand, maybe the American government will see Musk’s tweet as an easy solution to the problem and will not transfer funds to him for operating Starlink in Ukraine.