The prospect of Starlink’s disappearance from the battlefield could prove costly to Ukraine as it has found renewed success in driving back Russian forces.
Billionaire businessman Elon Musk brought internet to war-torn Ukraine earlier this year, helping aid the country’s counteroffensive against invading Russian forces.
From the start of the war, the Ukrainian military relied on Musk’s Starlink system to connect its drones attacking Russian forces to the internet.
By April, Musk’s company had delivered some 5,000 terminals to Ukraine, helping undermine Russian propaganda efforts as the service attracted approximately 150,000 daily users within the country, per estimates from the Ukraine government.
But all of that, some fear, could soon be lost.
Earlier this week, reports emerged that Musk—who initially pledged to provide the lion’s share of Starlink’s Ukrainian infrastructure with assistance from the U.S. government—wrote to the Pentagon in September saying SpaceX, which operates Starlink, can no longer afford to cover the cost of the service and asking for the U.
