Ukrainian Ambassador Insists ‘No Payment Dispute, Per Se’ Amid Starlink Tiff With Elon Musk
Despite recent tension between Elon Musk and Ukrainian government officials, Ambassador Oksana Markarova insisted there’s “no payment dispute” regarding Ukraine’s use of the Starlink internet service.
The Ukrainian envoy to the U.S. spoke with CBS’ Margaret Brennan on Sunday about the country’s latest response to Russia’s aggression and the delayed delivery of American weapons to Ukraine. The conversation on Face The Nation eventually turned to Musk’s announcement that SpaceX will keep funding the Starlink satellite system in Ukraine “even though Starlink is still losing money & other companies are getting billions” in taxpayer funding.
“What’s the bottom line? Can your military depend on this for communication or not?” Brennan asked.
“Well, look, I have disagreed with Elon Musk on some of his views about Crimea, and we were happy to discuss it with him,” Markarova answered. “But with regard to the company, we have started cooperation with Starlink, excellent cooperation. Before this phase of the war. We got the Starlinks in Ukraine very quickly. In some areas for humanitarian support, it’s the only connection that we have, and it’s very important to continue having it, and I’m positive that we will find a solution there.”
Brennan asked if this meant that the issue of payment has not been resolved yet, to which, Markarova optimistically said “I’m sure we will find the solution there.” Brennan also referred to a report on recent Starlink outages in Ukraine in order to ask “Is this payment dispute hurting your military?
“There is no payment dispute, per se,” Markarova replied. “I mean, there are discussions on that we need more and where we need them and how we will need them, but the actual reason for the outages is Russian aggression, and the fact that they are bombing our infrastructure and this is disrupting the connectivity of all the cellular operators and trying to interfere also with with others. We’re trying to resolve it in many possible ways, and Starlink has been an instrumental part of the solution.”
The development with Starlink comes as Musk publicly said his company cannot “indefinitely” fund Starlink’s use in Ukraine. CNN has also reported that SpaceX had asked the Pentagon to take over the funding for the service.
When the news broke that Musk was asking the Pentagon to pay for Starlink, he cheekily suggested at the time that the move was a punitive response to Ukrainian Ambassador Andrij Melnyk telling him to “f*ck off” for proposing that Ukraine end the war by appeasing Russia.
“We’re just following his recommendation,” Musk tweeted with a shrug emoji.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy also mocked Musk’s peace plan earlier this month, which Musk responded to by saying “I still very much support Ukraine, but am convinced that massive escalation of the war will cause great harm to Ukraine and possibly the world.”
Watch above via CBS
