Ukraine said it received 150 sentences SpaceX’s Starlink from Poland hours before Tesla Inc TSLA chairman Elon Musk told the US to pay for the high-speed internet services because they can’t anymore afford to give it to Ukraine for free.
What happened: Ukrainian Ministry of Reintegration of Temporarily Occupied Territories said the Starlink sets would allow communications to be quickly restored until the damaged infrastructure in the liberated regions is rebuilt.
“Some of them are intended for mobile operators and internet providers. Currently, cellular operators have restored 27 cellular base stations in the Kharkiv region and are restoring more,” she added.
This happened days after Musk drew massive flak on social mediaincluding by Ukrainian officials for questioning his supporters on the most likely outcome of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Following his tweet, the outgoing ambassador of Ukraine to Germany said, Andriy Melnyk, Musk replied sharply. “F**k off is my very diplomatic response to you Elon Musk,” he said.
Musk later defended it to the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and said he supports Kyiv. “I still strongly support Ukraine, but I am convinced that a massive escalation of the war will cause great damage to Ukraine and possibly the world,” he said.
The billionaire entrepreneur said on Twitter early Friday that SpaceX cannot fund the Starlink internet service in Ukraine “indefinitely” and send it several thousand more terminals.
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