After Spat with Zelensky, Elon Musk Pulls the Plug on Starlink Satcom Services for Ukraine

Satellite communications provider Starlink has expressed its inability to continue providing services to Ukrainian defense and civilian users.

Starlink President Elon Musk wrote a letter to Pentagon officials saying the company cannot continue the expenditure and asking the Pentagon fund the system, a US DoD statement said Friday.

Billionaire Elon Musk and Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky have had a spat on Twitter after Musk asked Twitter users to take a pool on a plan to end Russia's war in Ukraine. In the poll, Musk proposed UN-supervised elections in four occupied regions that Moscow last week moved to annex after what it called "referendums".

To this, Zelensky responded with his own poll. “Which @elonmusk do you like more? - one who supports Ukraine, one who supports Russia,” he tweeted.

Ukraine has been using the Starlink communications system launched by SpaceX, the U.S. space technologies company. SpaceX has been funding the terminals in Ukraine, and the system has become important to the continuation of both civilian and military communications in the embattled country.

"We certainly recognize the advantages that any satcom [satellite communications] capability has that allows the Ukrainians to use not just on the battlefield, but within the country itself," said Deputy Pentagon Press Secretary Sabrina Singh during a briefing Friday. "We understand the fragility in those communications, and it's important that not just command and control may remain intact on the battlefield but throughout [the country]. We're assessing our options and trying to do what we can to help keep these, these satcoms remain for the Ukrainian forces."