Elon Musk U-turns, says he will keep funding Starlink in Ukraine - Al Jazeera English

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Founder of SpaceX says though Starlink is losing money, helium volition ‘just support backing Ukraine gov’t for free’, a time aft suggesting helium cannot.

Published On 15 Oct 2022

Elon Musk has announced his institution volition proceed to wage for Starlink outer net services successful war-torn Ukraine a time aft suggesting helium cannot support funding the project.

“The hellhole with it,” the world’s richest antheral wrote connected Saturday connected Twitter.

“Even though Starlink is inactive losing wealth & different companies are getting billions of payer $, we’ll conscionable support backing Ukraine govt for free.”

Although it was not instantly wide whether Musk’s alteration of caput was genuine, helium aboriginal appeared to bespeak it was. When a Twitter idiosyncratic told Musk “No bully deed goes unpunished”, helium replied, “Even so, we should inactive bash bully deeds”.

A time earlier, Musk had said connected Twitter that SpaceX would not beryllium capable to wage for Starlink successful Ukraine indefinitely. And the US subject confirmed it was communicating with the billionaire’s institution astir backing for the captious network.

The discussions travel arsenic Musk has been embroiled successful public spats with Ukrainian leaders who were angered by his arguable proposals for de-escalating the conflict.

While Ukraine has agelong maintained it volition ne'er hold to relinquish onshore taken by force, Musk suggested that it permanently cede the Crimea portion to Russia, that caller referendums beryllium held nether United Nations auspices to find the destiny of Russian-controlled territory, and that Ukraine hold to neutrality.

The hellhole with it … adjacent though Starlink is inactive losing wealth & different companies are getting billions of payer $, we’ll conscionable support backing Ukraine govt for free

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 15, 2022

Starlink, a constellation of much than 3,000 tiny satellites successful debased Earth orbit, has been captious to Ukraine’s communications arsenic it fights against Russia’s invasion.

Musk activated Starlink successful precocious February aft Ukraine’s net services were disrupted due to the fact that of Russia’s invasion. Its net terminals person since been important successful keeping the Ukrainian subject online.

SpaceX has donated immoderate 25,000 crushed terminals to Ukraine, according to an updated fig fixed by Musk past week.

The disruption of the work whitethorn person dire consequences for Ukraine. Vice Prime Minister Mykhailo Fedorov said this week that Starlink services helped reconstruct vigor and communications infrastructure successful captious areas aft much than 100 Russian cruise rocket attacks.

Encrypted outer messages person been utilized for subject communications aft the section mobile telephone web was severed during dense shelling.

Mykola Balaban, the lawman caput of the Ukraine Centre for Strategic Communications and Information Security, told Al Jazeera that Musk’s enactment is important for Ukrainian subject efforts.

“For the past six months, Ukraine has showed precise bully strategical communication,” helium added. “Of people determination is sometimes lags successful the connection and immoderate misunderstanding, but astatine the extremity of the day, arsenic you spot with this tweet [from Musk], we managed to pass to our partners astir the satellite the value of supporting Ukraine and Ukrainian radical successful their combat against the warfare from Russia.”

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