Alwaght- Elon Musk, Chief Executive Officer of SpaceX claimed on Saturday Russia was working to disable his Starlink satellite service, which helps Ukrainian forces in the conflict with Moscow.
“Starlink is only comms [communications] system still working at warfront – others all dead. Russia is actively trying to kill Starlink. To safeguard, SpaceX has diverted massive resources towards defense. Even so, Starlink may still die,” Musk said in a tweet.
Musk had donated $80 million worth of Starlink terminals to Kiev at the beginning of the conflict in late February, with the system becoming the main communications tool for Ukraine’s forces.
However, the world’s richest man had a falling out with Ukrainian officials in early October after sharing his peace plan for the conflict. According to Musk, Russia should “redo elections of annexed regions under UN supervision,” while Kiev would commit to neutrality and drop its claim to Crimea.
Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky reacted to the idea by launching a poll on Twitter, asking followers “which Elon Musk” they “like more” – the one “who supports Ukraine” or the one “who supports Russia.”
The Twitter spat coincided with reports that the Ukrainian military had started to experience problems with its Starlink communications. Earlier this week, Musk said he couldn’t provide Ukraine with Starlink services for free anymore and suggested that the Pentagon should be paying for it. The US Department of Defense said on Friday that it had been discussing the issue with SpaceX.
