An American professor calls Elon Musk “Bad” on his wildly unpopular pro-Ukrainian YouTube Channel after Musk threatened to shut off Starlink service in Ukraine.
Elon musk was making headlines as he complained on Twitter about the cost of maintaining Starlink for Ukraine. [i]
After a very public Twitter argument between Musk and Zelenskyy, SpaceX’s director of government sales wrote, “We are not in a position to further donate terminals to Ukraine, or fund the existing terminals for an indefinite period of time.”[ii]
It was hard to determine whether this was sour grapes on Musk’s part after a Ukrainian Ambassador tweeted that Musk should F*** off or a shrewd move to get the U.S. Government to pick up the tab for Starlink service to Ukraine.
Musk tweeted: “We’re just following his recommendation.”[iii]
Mykhailo Podolyak was more conciliatory when he tweeted, “Let’s be honest. Like it or not, @elonmusk helped us survive the most critical moments of the war. Business has the right to its own strategies. [Ukraine] will find a solution to keep #Starlink working. We expect that the company will provide stable connection till the end of negotiations.”[iv] But this may not happen.
In reality, neither Musk nor Zelenskyy benefited from the very public dispute. The only winner was President Putin.
[i] https://fortune.com/2022/10/14/elon-musk-unreasonable-for-spacex-to-continue-funding-ukraine-starlink/
[ii] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/oct/14/elon-musk-spacex-no-longer-fund-starlink-internet-ukraine
[iii] https://www.rt.com/russia/564660-musk-ukraine-starlink-melnik/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=RSS
[iv] https://www.rferl.org/a/ukraine-elon-musk-starlink-funding-zelenskiy/32083923.html
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