SpaceX wants Pentagon to foot bills for Starlink satellite services in Ukraine

Elon Musk-founded firm SpaceX has warned that it may stop funding the Starlink satellite internet service in Ukraine, an ‘essential part of critical infrastructure’ and source of communication for Ukraine’s military amid the war with Russia, and has asked the Pentagon to foot the bill now.

SpaceX's Starlink satellite internet terminals have been a crucial means of communication for Ukraine's military, enabling it to fight and stay connected even as cellular phone and internet networks were destroyed in its conflict with Russia.

According to documents accessed by CNN, Elon Musk’s SpaceX had sent a letter to the Pentagon last month informing that it could no longer afford to provide the Starlink service in the same way and requested it to take over funding, demanding contribution in tens of millions of dollars per month.

SpaceX claimed that the services would cost over $120 million for the rest of the year and could cost close to $400 million for the next 12 months, the report said.

Musk tweeted on Friday that the operation had already cost SpaceX $80 million and will cost more than $100 million by the end of the year. To date, almost 20,000 Starlink satellites have been donated to Ukraine.

SpaceX has warned the Pentagon that it may discontinue its satellite services in Ukraine unless the US military contributes tens of millions of dollars each month.

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“We are not in a position to further donate terminals to Ukraine, or fund the existing terminals for an indefinite period of time,” SpaceX’s director of government sales wrote to the Pentagon in the September letter.

A request for nearly 8,000 additional Starlink terminals made directly to Musk in July by the commanding general of the Ukrainian military, General Valerii Zaluzhniy, is among the SpaceX documents given to the Pentagon and seen by CNN.

In a separate cover letter to the Pentagon, an outside consultant working for SpaceX wrote, “SpaceX faces terribly difficult decisions here. I do not think they have the financial ability to provide any additional terminals or service as requested by General Zaluzhniy.”

The previously unreported records offer an unusual breakdown of SpaceX's own internal Starlink data, including the expenses and expenditures related to many terminals in Ukraine. They also shed new light on covert discussions that gave Ukraine communications equipment and services worth millions of dollars at minimal expense to Kiev.

The announcement by SpaceX that it will discontinue supporting Starlink also coincides with growing scepticism about Musk's allegiance in Ukraine. Musk recently tweeted a peace proposal that calls on Ukraine to cede control of the eastern territories of Luhansk and Donetsk as well as Crimea, and came under fire on Twitter drawing from Ukrainian leadership, including President Volodymyr Zelensky.

It's difficult to overstate the impact Starlink has had in Ukraine after more than seven months of the conflict. The quick, small, and simple-to-use SpaceX devices have been used by the Kyiv administration, Ukrainian army, NGOs, and people. It is also utilised to help fly drones and feedback video to correct artillery firing in addition to verbal and electrical communication.

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