Poland says it’s prepared to seek alternatives to Elon Musk’s Starlink network to provide satellite internet access to Ukraine if the tech billionaire proves to be an “unreliable provider.”
Warsaw is Ukraine’s largest donor to finance terminals for the space-based communications system, which is a critical tool in Kyiv’s fight against Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion.
But Musk is reportedly threatening to pull Kyiv’s access to his satellite network, and in an X post on Sunday repeated his threats, claiming that Ukraine’s “entire front line would collapse” if the country’s troops were cut off from Starlink, which is operated by Musk-owned SpaceX.
In response to Musk’s post, Polish Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski emphasized that the Polish Digitization Ministry is one of the largest providers of Starlink to Ukraine, with Warsaw funding half of the 42,000 Starlink terminals operating in the country at a cost of about $50 million a year.
“If SpaceX proves to be an unreliable provider we will be forced to look for other suppliers,” Sikorski wrote in his post on X, calling out the “ethics” of Musk’s “threatening the victim of aggression.”
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio replied to Sikorski’s post by saying that more gratitude should be shown for Starlink.
“No one has made any threats about cutting Ukraine off from Starlink,” Rubio said on X. “And say thank you because without Starlink, Ukraine would have lost this war long ago and Russians would be on the border with Poland right now.”
As POLITICO reported a week ago, the European Commission is already looking into how it can help Ukraine secure alternative satellite communications capacity in the wake of Musk’s threats.
Musk framed his Sunday post as a message to end the war in Ukraine, but according to press reports the Starlink threats may be part of Washington’s strategy to pressure Kyiv into a deal over Ukraine’s critical minerals.
A possible mineral deal between Ukraine and the U.S. could be on the table in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday, when delegations from the two countries meet there for the first time since Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy clashed with U.S. President Donald Trump at the White House in late February.
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