Elon Musk says SpaceX will continue to pay for Ukraine's access to Starlink

In September, SpaceX sent a letter to the Department of Defense, asking the Pentagon to pay for expenses related to Ukraine's use of its Starlink satellite internet. According to CNN, SpaceX told the department that continuing to provide the Ukrainian government with access to Starlink would cost the company more than $120 million for the remainder of 2022 and nearly $400 million in the remainder of 2022. over the next 12 months. "We are unable to donate more terminals to Ukraine, or fund existing terminals indefinitely," the company wrote. Now company chief Elon Musk appears to have reversed his decision to ask the Pentagon for help and wrote on Twitter that SpaceX "will continue to fund [the] Ukraine [government] for free" even though Starlink always losing money.

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Musk backed up what he said in his tweet to The Financial Times and added that SpaceX will continue to fund Ukraine's satellite internet access 'indefinitely' from Starlink.

When news of the letter broke, Musk defended his company's position and clarified that SpaceX was not asking the Pentagon to pay for previous expenses. He explained that SpaceX simply cannot fund the existing system in Ukraine and regularly send thousands of new terminals to replace those regularly destroyed by Russian forces at the same time. Musk added that the "burn" to keep the Starlink system running in the country is $20 million a month, as it also had to "defend against cyberattacks and jamming".

Earlier this month, The Times reported that Ukrainian troops were struggling with Starlink outages that led to a "catastrophic" loss of communication on the frontline. Musk responded that the article "misrepresents that terminals [and] Starlink service have been paid for, when only a small percentage have been." According to the SpaceX letter obtained by CNN, approximately 85% of Ukraine's 20,000 terminals at the time were fully or partially funded by the US, UK, Poland and other countries. 'other external sources.

The Pentagon confirmed after the letter became public that it had discussed the payments with SpaceX, but also considered potential alternatives. Sabrina Singh, the Pentagon's deputy press secretary, said in a statement, "It's not just SpaceX, there are other entities that we can definitely partner with to provide Ukraine with what it needs. on the battlefield."

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