Ukraine’s fears that its troops may lose access to Elon Musk’s crucial Starlink internet service deepened in the past week after 1,300 of the military’s satellite units went offline, according to two sources familiar with the outage.
But concerns have risen recently over the dependability of SpaceX after discussions about funding were revealed and outages were reported near the frontlines.
Days after the CNN report, Musk appeared to reverse course, claiming that SpaceX had withdrawn the request.
“The hell with it,” Musk tweeted, “we’ll just keep funding Ukraine govt for free.”.
Negotiations between SpaceX and the Defense Department continue despite Musk’s claim that SpaceX withdrepw its request, according to a senior defense official.
“We continue to discuss Ukraine’s satellite communication needs with Ukraine and companies like SpaceX and others,” Brigadier General Patrick Ryder told reporters.
Whether greater cooperation with SpaceX would give the US government stronger control over the Starlink signal in Ukraine has not been answered. »