Tesla Inc TSLA and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk on Wednesday took a swipe at Russian space agency chief Dmitry Rogozin, who alleged the billionaire of taking Ukraine's side amid the ongoing war.
What Happened: A tweet shared by space exploration enthusiast Katya Pavlushchenko showed a video of Rogozin, the head of Roscosmos, speaking in Russian. According to her translation, Rogozin said Musk was helping Ukraine with his "purely civilian" Starlink.
"Here, look, he has chosen the side. I don't even blame him personally. This is the West that we should never trust," the tweet claimed Rogozin as saying.
Musk responded to the post, saying Ukraine was experiencing "strange" internet outages, perhaps due to “bad weather," and that SpaceX was helping fix the issue.
Starlink beams down high-speed internet, especially in remote areas including those ravaged by war or natural calamity, via satellites in orbit to Earth.
See Also: How Is Elon Musk's Starlink Service Working Out In Ukraine? An Engineer Shares His Experience
Why It Matters: Musk had rushed to Ukraine's plea to provide Starlink stations, confirming over the weekend that its services were active in the country.
Ukrainian Vice Prime Minister Mykhailo Fedorov on Tuesday tweeted to show a military truck carrying a cargo of Starlink terminals.
Starlink is known to have launched over 2,000 satellites, with SpaceX hoping to have 4,425 satellites in orbit by 2024. The Federal Communications Commission has approved 11,943 satellites to be launched by Starlink.
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