Everything is falling apart between Starlink and Ukraine
The commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian army, “integral nationalist” general Valeri Zaluzhnyi, asked SpaceX a month ago for a supply of 8,000 additional terminals. His army had previously received 20,000 terminals – worth between 1,500 and 2,500 dollars depending on the model – largely funded by Poland, the United States and the United Kingdom.
According to General Zaluzhnyi, about 500 terminals are being destroyed on the battlefield every month. Without these terminals, the army and the civil authorities no longer have any means of communication. A failure has already occurred which apparently resulted in a disaster, the details of which are classified Secret-Defense.
The price of the terminals and their communications, which are borne by SpaceX, currently amounts to 80 million dollars. It should climb to 100 million by the end of 2022 and to 400 million by the end of 2023.
Despite its public commitment at the start of the war in support of Ukraine, SpaceX sent a letter to the Pentagon asking it foot the bill because the company could no longer afford it.
Starlink CEO Elon Musk has recently exchanged some caustic tweets with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. The billionaire, who is privy to a lot of information that we don’t know considering that he has access to all the messages exchanged by the Ukrainian authorities on Starlink, has taken a stand for the recognition of Crimea and Donbass as Russian provinces.
The sum requested by SpaceX is negligible when compared to the value of the company (127 billion dollars). Elon Musk, who lived in South Africa until he was 17, is aware of what a supremacist ideology like the “integral nationalists” means. If he cuts off access to Starlink, the Ukrainian military will crumble within days.
- Source : Voltaire Network
