Submission + - SpaceX can't afford running Starlink internet in Ukraine (theguardian.com)
denzacar writes: Elon Musk's SpaceX has said it cannot afford to continue to donate satellite internet to Ukraine and has asked the US government to pay for its "donation".
This comes after The Economist and The Financial Times quoted Ukrainian government officials saying that soldiers had "difficulty connecting to the satellite internet service when they entered cities that had only recently been freed from Russian troops", causing "catastrophic loss of communication between the country's military forces".
Ukrainian government officials at the time expressed concern that the outages are related to Musk's recent Twitter poll in which he suggested Ukraine ceding occupied territory to Russia, which they believe "was the product of communication with Putin" and that "Putin might inveigle Mr Musk into withdrawing access to Starlink".
Musk at the time simply ignored allegations of communication with Putin in the Financial Times' report, concentrating on calling it "bad reporting" only regarding the "false claims" about the costs that SpaceX has had while providing Starlink terminals to Ukraine.
When faced with a second report of his recent talk with Putin on Ukraine, by Ian Bremmer, the president of the political risk consultancy Eurasia Group, Musk first denied claiming to "have spoken to Putin only once... about 18 months ago... [on] space" — then reiterated tweeting that "Nobody should trust Bremmer".
This comes after The Economist and The Financial Times quoted Ukrainian government officials saying that soldiers had "difficulty connecting to the satellite internet service when they entered cities that had only recently been freed from Russian troops", causing "catastrophic loss of communication between the country's military forces".
Ukrainian government officials at the time expressed concern that the outages are related to Musk's recent Twitter poll in which he suggested Ukraine ceding occupied territory to Russia, which they believe "was the product of communication with Putin" and that "Putin might inveigle Mr Musk into withdrawing access to Starlink".
Musk at the time simply ignored allegations of communication with Putin in the Financial Times' report, concentrating on calling it "bad reporting" only regarding the "false claims" about the costs that SpaceX has had while providing Starlink terminals to Ukraine.
When faced with a second report of his recent talk with Putin on Ukraine, by Ian Bremmer, the president of the political risk consultancy Eurasia Group, Musk first denied claiming to "have spoken to Putin only once... about 18 months ago... [on] space" — then reiterated tweeting that "Nobody should trust Bremmer".
