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

Secretary of Condition Marco Rubio and tech billionaire Elon Musk have had a contentious trade with Polish Overseas Minister Radoslaw Sikorski, in a order of X posts on Sunday over the virtue of Musk’s Starlink satellite tv for pc machine in Ukraine.

In a reaction to a put up from Musk bringing up turning off the machine, Sikorski implied that any ultimatum to close i’m sick Starlink would lead to a seek for alternative providers.

Rubio briefly pushed aside the claims that Musk would close i’m sick the machine and steered Sikorski to be thankful.

The trio went from side to side in an trade of posts on X that ended with Musk calling Sikorski “small man”.

Starlink’s machine is a part of SpaceX’s project to lend high-speed web to faraway and underserved grounds – like warfare zones – around the globe.

Sunday’s trade began when Musk posted that Starlink used to be the “backbone of the Ukrainian army”.

“Their entire front line would collapse if I turned it off,” he wrote.

Sikorski nearest answered to Musk’s put up, announcing that Poland used to be paying for the provider.

“Starlinks for Ukraine are paid for by the Polish Digitization Ministry at the cost of about $50 million per year,” Sikorski wrote. “The ethics of threatening the victim of aggression apart, if SpaceX proves to be an unreliable provider we will be forced to look for other suppliers.”

Sikorski’s put up brought about Rubio to chime in, writing that the Polish overseas minister used to be “just making things up”.

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

“And say thank you because without Starlink Ukraine would have lost this war long ago and Russians would be on the border with Poland right now,” he added.

Musk then answered to Sikorski’s put up calling him a “small man”.

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

The Starlink terminals are key to Ukraine’s military operations and feature been old because the get started 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 way of america Segment of Defence in June 2023.