SpaceX corporation has informed the United States government that the company can no longer fund the StarLink services provided to Ukraine. Without Starlink, the Ukrainian army will have almost no way to reliably communicate with what's left of its battlefield troops, and would almost immediately collapse.

This comes days after Ukrainian Ambassador Melnyk Andrij told Musk to “fuck off.”

To many observers, this is a two-fold matter:

1) Ukraine bashed the heck out of StarLink founder Elon Musk for daring to suggest a negotiated peace with Russia; so it is likely Musk has his nose out of joint over the insults, AND;

2) It likely costs almost nothing to fund the operation of Ukraine's Starlink services since all the satellites were already up and operating, so this is seen by many as a naked money grab; to get the US gov't to fork over more cash under the guise of "aid to Ukraine."

Either way, it seems to many that Musk wins. He either gets to shut off the people who took his help for granted, then bashed him publicly for suggesting peace, OR, he gets a ton of cash from the US government to continue providing service to Ukraine.



UPDATE 8:51 AM EDT -- Elon Musk suggests he is pulling Starlink from Ukraine because ambassador was rude