The billionaire and Tesla boss Elon Musk has so far supported Ukraine with his satellite internet service Starlink. Now he no longer wants to pay for the costs.

In February, shortly after the Russian invasion, billionaire Tesla boss Elon Musk announced the activation of his company SpaceX’s Starlink satellite internet service in Ukraine. Now the 51-year-old no longer wants to pay for the costs.

SpaceX sent a letter last month saying it could no longer fund the Starlink service as it previously did. The company is asking the US Department of Defense to cover the costs. It would cost $120 million to operate for the rest of the year, SpaceX writes. Over the next 12 months, the cost would be nearly $400 million.

Ukraine reported frontline Starlink equipment failures

“We are not in a position to donate more receiving equipment to Ukraine or to fund the existing terminals indefinitely,” the broadcaster CNN quoted on Thursday evening (local time) from a letter from the company to the US Department of Defense in September.
According to a report in the Financial Times, Ukrainian troops recently reported failures of Starlink devices on the front line. Accordingly, the system plays a central role in the counter-offensives of the Ukrainian military, which have been ongoing for weeks.
In response, Musk tweeted: “What happens on the battlefield is confidential.” At the beginning of October, he also caused a stir with a proposal that Ukraine should cede Crimea to Russia and that a UN-supervised referendum be held for other areas in the south and east of the country.

Musk spoke to Putin about Ukraine war?

Musk had recently rejected a report that he spoke to Kremlin chief Vladimir Putin before his controversial peace proposals in the Ukraine war. That’s not true, Musk wrote in a tweet on Tuesday.

“I only spoke to Putin once and that was 18 months ago,” he added. It was about space travel. Musk is not only the boss of the electric car manufacturer Tesla, but also runs the space company SpaceX.

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