What is Elon Musk up to in Ukraine?

Elon Musk, the boss of Tesla and SpaceX and the richest man in the world, has unexpectedly indicated that the latter company will no longer be providing its Starlink satellite internet service to Ukrainians for free.

The service has proven invaluable in the country since Russia’s invasion began on 24 February, enabling the Ukrainian military to keep lines of communication open even when IT infrastructure has been destroyed by enemy missiles.

The company first dispatched its terminals to the warzone just days into the conflict after Ukraine’s vice prime minister Mykhailo Fedorov tweeted Mr Musk directly asking for his help, returning to social media just two days later with a picture posted in gratitude to show the first shipment of Starlink equipment arriving.

An estimated 20,000 terminals have since been donated, although the company’s generous support now appears to be coming to an end in a blow to the resistance effort.

“We are not in a position to further donate terminals to Ukraine, or fund the existing terminals for an indefinite period of time,” SpaceX’s director of government sales, Bryon Hargis, reportedly wrote to the Pentagon this week, asking for the US Department of Defense to pick up the bill instead.

Mr Musk has subsequently griped on Twitter about the expense involved, saying the gesture had cost his company $80m (£71m) so far, a total expected to rise to $100m (£88m) by the year’s end.

The sudden about-turn follows shortly after Mr Musk drew an adverse reaction online by tweeting his plan to bring peace to Ukraine, which included, among other suggestions, the concession of land to Russia.

“Redo elections of annexed regions under UN supervision. Russia leaves if that is will of the people,” Mr Musk wrote in his brief proposal of 3 October.

“Crimea formally part of Russia, as it has been since 1783 (until Khrushchev’s mistake). Water supply to Crimea assured. Ukraine remains neutral.

“This is highly likely to be the outcome in the end – just a question of how many die before then. Also worth noting that a possible, albeit unlikely, outcome from this conflict is nuclear war.”

The thread was accompanied by a poll inviting Mr Musk’s followers to indicate whether or not they approved of his ideas: 40.9 per cent of respondents were in favour but 59.1 per cent were opposed.

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky responded with a Twitter poll of his own, asking his followers which version of Elon Musk they preferred: the one who supports Ukraine or the one who supports Russia.

The pro-Ukraine incarnation of Musk drew 78.8 per cent of the vote.

“I still very much support Ukraine, but am convinced that massive escalation of the war will cause great harm to Ukraine and possibly the world,” he responded.

But it was the angry reaction from Ukraine’s ambassador to Germany, Andrij Melnyk, that attracted the most attention and appears to have really upset the tech tycoon’s fragile ego.

“F*** off is my very diplomatic reply to you Elon Musk,” Mr Melnyk wrote in one tweet.

“The only outcome ist [sic] that now no Ukrainian will EVER buy your f…ing tesla crap. So good luck to you,” he continued in another.

When the connection to the ambassador’s remarks was pointed out on Twitter on Friday by Jason Jay Smarts, a special correspondent to The Kyiv Post, Mr Musk replied by saying: “We’re just following his recommendation.”

The entrepreneur has, in the interim, continued to insist he remains pro-Ukraine and is interested only in seeing an end to the bloodshed.

He has also been forced to deny accusations that he communicated with Russian leader Vladimir Putin before issuing his four-point peace plan, insisting that he has not done so for 18 months and the last time the two men were in talks they had discussed the space race, not war.

Mr Musk did, however, memorably challenge Mr Putin, a keen judo practitioner, to “single combat” on 14 March, presumably a joke suggestion intended only to attract attention.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov did receive Mr Musk’s latest proposals much more warmly than his Ukrainian peers though, saying it was “very positive that somebody like Elon Musk is looking for a peaceful way out of this situation”.