(WASHINGTON) SpaceX boss Elon Musk announced on Saturday that he would continue to fund the Starlink internet network in Ukraine, returning to his calls the day before the US government took over.
Posted at 2:34 pm.
“It doesn’t matter…even if Starlink still loses money and other companies receive billions of taxpayer dollars, we will continue to fund the Ukrainian government,” the city’s richest man tweeted.
On Friday, Elon Musk warned that SpaceX “(cannot) fund the existing system indefinitely and deploy thousands of additional terminals.” […]. This is not fair. »
SpaceX sent a letter to the Pentagon last month saying it could no longer afford the cost of service in Ukraine, CNN reported.
According to the TV channel, the company has asked the US Department of Defense to take over funding for the use of Starlink by the Ukrainian government and its military, which is estimated to cost $400 million over the next 12 months.
Since the start of the war in Ukraine, SpaceX has provided thousands of terminals there that provide Internet connectivity through the cluster of satellites that make up the Starlink network.
Around 25,000 terminals have been deployed in the country till date. Elon Musk assures SpaceX that all the costs of deploying and maintaining the Starlink terminals in Ukraine are covered by SpaceX, except for a “small percentage”.
The Starlink network helped maintain Internet connectivity in areas affected by the Russian military in Ukraine. As of June, officials said about 15% of Ukraine’s existing internet infrastructure had been destroyed or damaged.
Starlink is widely used by Ukrainian forces to calculate the trajectory of their missiles and geolocate their targets.
