Starlink in the Global South

Two weeks ago, on March 10, Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski took to X to respond to Elon Musk’s claim that Ukraine “entire front line” would collapse if he turned Starlink.

- BRAYAN JAYAWARDHANA and UDITHA DEVAPRIYA

Sikorski, who seemed agitated if not angry, tweeted that Poland was paying for Starlink’s use in Ukraine, and that if it proved to be unreliable, his country would not hesitate to turn to alternatives, questioning “the ethics of threatening the victim of aggression.”

Almost immediately, Musk and US Secretary of State Rubio retorted, with Rubio accusing the Minister of “just making things up” and requesting him to “say thank you because without Starlink Ukraine would have lost this war long ago.”

Musk’s response was blunter. He asked the Minister to “be quiet”, referring to him as a “small man” and stating that Poland pays “a tiny fraction of the cost.” He added that Starlink has no substitute, a claim demonstrably true: the system, as the BBC puts it, has been “key to Ukraine’s army operations” since 2022. Later, Musk stated he had no intention of halting Starlink in the country. The spat followed weeks of growing tensions between Washington and Europe, with top US officials including President Donald Trump and Vice-President J. D. Vance complaining that Europe had not been grateful enough about US assistance to the region, particularly to Ukraine. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy had to face the brunt of it in the White House when both Vance and Trump - with Secretary of State Rubio watching with barely concealed rage on the side - castigating him for not pursuing a ceasefire with Russia.