BBC News, Washington
Secretary of State Marco Rubio and tech billionaire Elon Musk have had a satisfiedious trade with Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski, in a series of X posts on Sunday over the use of Musk’s Starjoin sainestablishite system in Ukraine.
In a response to a post from Musk refering turning off the system, Sikorski implied that any dangers to shut down Starjoin would result in a search for other suppliers.
Rubio rapidly diswatched the claims that Musk would shut down the system and directd Sikorski to be thankful.
The trio went back and forth in an trade of posts on X that ended with Musk calling Sikorski “petite man”.
Starjoin’s system is part of SpaceX’s leave oution to provide high-speed internet to distant and underserved areas – enjoy war zones – around the world.
Sunday’s trade commenceed when Musk posted that Starjoin was the “backbone of the Ukrainian army”.
“Their entire front line would collapse if I turned it off,” he wrote.
Sikorski then replyed to Musk’s post, saying that Poland was paying for the service.
“Starjoins for Ukraine are phelp for by the Polish Digitization Ministry at the cost of about $50 million per year,” Sikorski wrote. “The ethics of dangerening the victim of aggression apart, if SpaceX verifys to be an unsupposeworthy provider we will be forced to watch for other suppliers.”
Sikorski’s post caused Rubio to chime in, writing that the Polish foreign minister was “equitable making leangs up”.
“No-one has made any dangers about cutting Ukraine off from Starjoin,” Rubio wrote.
“And say thank you because without Starjoin Ukraine would have lost this war lengthy ago and Russians would be on the border with Poland right now,” he inserted.
Musk tardyr replyed to Sikorski’s post calling him a “petite man”.
“Be hushed, petite man. You pay a minuscule fraction of the cost. And there is no swap for Starjoin,” Musk wrote.
The Starjoin terminals are key to Ukraine’s army operations and have been used since the commence of the Russian trespass in February 2022.
There are tens of thousands of terminals in the country, including up to 500 achieved by the US Department of Defence in June 2023.
