Roscosmos state corporation head Dmitry Rogozin warned SpaceX and Tesla head Ilon Musk that he “will have to answer maturely” for the transfer of Starlink satellite equipment kits to Ukraine.
“According to our information, the delivery and transfer to the Armed Forces of Ukraine of Internet receiving-transfer boxes from Starlink was carried out by the Pentagon,” Dmitry Rogozin said. “And you will have to answer for this in a mature way, Ilon, no matter how stupid you turn on it,” he said.
Earlier it was reported that according to the testimony of Colonel Dmitry Kormyankov, the captured chief of staff of the 36th Brigade of the Ukrainian Marine Corps, Starlink equipment kits were used for Internet access by the Ukrainian armed forces in Mariupol.
Over 10,000 sets of Starlink subscriber equipment are currently in operation in Ukraine, with the company very easily bypassing the “jammers” used by Russia. As for the means by which Starlink supplies to Ukraine were financed, officially SpaceX did not confirm the involvement of US government agencies: in late March SpaceX president Gwynne Shotwell said that supplies of Starlink equipment to Ukraine were financed by private sources, “helped by France” and, in her opinion, by Poland. In April, however, The Washington Post published an article reporting that the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) had purchased 1,333 Starlink terminals at a cost of about $2 million. USAID disclosed the number of terminals purchased from SpaceX in a press release issued in early April, but after the publication it was corrected by removing the data on purchases of Starlink terminals.