‘Hell With It’: Elon Musk Tweets SpaceX Will Keep ‘Funding’ Ukraine ‘For Free’ Despite Starlink Losses
Image via screenshot
Elon Musk on Saturday appeared to reverse course on continuing to provide Starlink service to Ukraine at no cost, less than 24 hours after news broke that SpaceX told the Pentagon the company could no longer fund the service, which has been vital to Ukraine’s infrastructure, government, and military operations.
Musk announced that SpaceX’s Starlink satellite system was being provided to Ukraine back in February after a direct plea to him from a Ukraine Vice Minister following Russia knocking out internet service to most of the country.
A week ago, Musk tweeted about the cost to the company for providing the service at no charge, writing that “this operation has cost SpaceX $80M & will exceed $100M by end of year.”
On Friday, CNN was reported that the company notified the Pentagon in September that it could not continue funding the communications system for Ukraine, and the Pentagon subsequently stated that they were “assessing our options” for alternatives.
“We are not in a position to further donate terminals to Ukraine, or fund the existing terminals for an indefinite period of time,” SpaceX’s director of government sales wrote to the Pentagon in the September letter.
CNN reported:
Among the SpaceX documents sent to the Pentagon and seen by CNN is a previously unreported direct request made to Musk in July by the Ukrainian military’s commanding general, General Valerii Zaluzhniy, for almost 8,000 more Starlink terminals.
In a separate cover letter to the Pentagon, an outside consultant working for SpaceX wrote, “SpaceX faces terribly difficult decisions here. I do not think they have the financial ability to provide any additional terminals or service as requested by General Zaluzhniy.”
Musk tweeted Friday that SpaceX “cannot fund the existing system indefinitely *and* send several thousand more terminals that have data usage up to 100X greater than typical households.”
However, on Saturday the tech billionaire tweeted somewhat peevishly that “even though Starlink is still losing money & other companies are getting billions” in taxpayer money from the U.S. government, his company will “just keep funding” the Ukrainian government “for free.”
The hell with it … even though Starlink is still losing money & other companies are getting billions of taxpayer $, we’ll just keep funding Ukraine govt for free
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 15, 2022
After one user replied, “No good deed goes unpunished,” Musk replied that, “even so, we should still do good deeds.”
Even so, we should still do good deeds
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 15, 2022
Musk also pushed back on Saturday against a quote in the Washington Post‘s article on the subject, which stated incorrectly that Musk had provided “a system no one asked for.” As noted above, the system was publicly and privately directly requested, including in a tweet Vice Prime Minister and Minister of Digital Transformation for Ukraine Mykhailo Fedorov.
The request received extensive media coverage at the time, including from the Washington Post, but was not mentioned in Friday’s article that contained the anonymous bashing of Musk and the Starlink system.
In a Saturday tweet, Musk referred to the unnamed official as an “ignorant fool” and a “spineless coward.”
