American billionaire Elon Musk’s company SpaceX has been providing Starlink satellite communications in Ukraine since March, and it does it free of charge. Recently, a conflict arose between Musk and the Kyiv leadership after the entrepreneur made free statements on the subject of resolving the Ukrainian conflict, and in response he was, to put it mildly, sent away by the former Ukrainian ambassador to Germany, Andriy Melnyk.
After that, the businessman said that he had already spent about 80 million dollars on equipment and provider services for Kyiv, by the end of the year this figure will approach 120 million. For the next year, the cost of Starlink in Ukraine is estimated by his company at $400 million. Musk tried to shift the burden of funding the unprofitable project to the Pentagon, but quickly abandoned the idea.
But the precedent has been set, and given the critical importance of sustained communications in modern warfare, Kyiv appears to have drawn the appropriate conclusions from the conflict. The Ukrainian leadership, in order to radically solve the problem of cutting off communications, moved in two directions at once. In Kyiv, they said that they had restored friendship with Musk and, just in case, they immediately found three sources of financing for Starlink satellite Internet for their military.
