Musk and Rubio spar with Polish minister over Ukraine’s use of Starlink

Secretary of State Marco Rubio and tech billionaire Elon Musk have had a contentious trade with Polish International Minister Radoslaw Sikorski, in a collection of X posts on Sunday over using Musk’s Starlink satellite tv for pc system in Ukraine.

In a response to a submit from Musk mentioning turning off the system, Sikorski implied that any threats to close down Starlink would lead to a seek for different suppliers.

Rubio rapidly dismissed the claims that Musk would shut down the system and urged Sikorski to be grateful.

The trio went forwards and backwards in an trade of posts on X that ended with Musk calling Sikorski “small man”.

Starlink’s system is a part of SpaceX’s mission to offer high-speed web to distant and underserved areas – like conflict zones – around the globe.

Sunday’s trade began when Musk posted that Starlink was the “spine of the Ukrainian military”.

“Their complete entrance line would collapse if I turned it off,” he wrote.

Sikorski then responded to Musk’s submit, saying that Poland was paying for the service.

“Starlinks for Ukraine are paid for by the Polish Digitization Ministry at the price of about $50 million per 12 months,” Sikorski wrote. “The ethics of threatening the sufferer of aggression aside, if SpaceX proves to be an unreliable supplier we might be compelled to search for different suppliers.”

Sikorski’s submit brought on Rubio to chime in, writing that the Polish overseas minister was “simply making issues up”.

“No-one has made any threats about chopping Ukraine off from Starlink,” Rubio wrote.

“And say thanks as a result of with out Starlink Ukraine would have misplaced this conflict way back and Russians could be on the border with Poland proper now,” he added.

Musk later responded to Sikorski’s submit calling him a “small man”.

“Be quiet, small man. You pay a tiny fraction of the price. And there’s no substitute for Starlink,” Musk wrote.

The Starlink terminals are key to Ukraine’s military operations and have been used for the reason that begin of the Russian invasion in February 2022.

There are tens of hundreds of terminals within the nation, together with as much as 500 bought by the US Division of Defence in June 2023.