SpaceX prevents satellite service from being used for drone attacks against Russia.
The government of Kiev appears annoyed after the US SpaceX announced that it is preventing Ukrainian forces from using the Starlink satellite service to guide drone strikes against Russian forces.
Gwynne Shotwell, president of Elon Musk’s space company , said Wednesday that Starlink, which provides Ukraine with satellite Internet access, cannot be “weaponized.”
Reacting, Mykhailo Podoliak, an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, criticized SpaceX’s decision in a post on Twitter, which is also owned by Musk.
“A year of Ukrainian resistance and companies have to decide: either they stand with Ukraine and the right to freedom […] or they stand with Russia and the ‘right’ to kill and seize land,” Podoliak wrote.
“SpaceX (Starlink) and Ms. Shotwell have to choose,” he continued.
The Ukrainian military uses thousands of Starlink satellite dishes for its communications, some of which were provided for free by SpaceX and others sent by the US, France and other countries.
Using Starlink for wartime drone control was “never” in the company’s plans, the company’s president said.
“But the Ukrainians are exploiting it in ways that were not intended and are not part of any agreement,” Shotwell said, according to Reuters.
“There are things we can do to limit” Ukraine’s ability to use Starlink for drones, he told reporters. “There are things we can do and we have done them,” he said, without elaborating.
The agreement with Kyiv, the SpaceX president said, was about using Starlink for humanitarian purposes, such as providing broadband to hospitals, financial institutions and families affected by the Russian invasion.
“We know the military uses it for their communications and that’s ok,” he said. “But it was never our intention that it be used for offensive purposes.”
Asked if SpaceX had envisioned using Starlink for attacks against Russian forces, Shotwell said: “We haven’t thought about that. I didn’t think about it. The Starlink team might have thought of that, I don’t know. But we learned our lesson quickly.”
Shotwell was then asked if restrictions imposed by SpaceX were the cause of the Starlink outages reported last year.
“I don’t want to answer because I’m not sure I know the answer,” she said.
The feud over Starlink is not the first between Elon Musk and Podoliak.
In December the Ukrainian official criticized the billionaire businessman for his proposal to cede territory to Russia in exchange for peace .
Source : In
