On Saturday, Ukraine’s vice prime minister made a plea for help directly to Elon Musk. “While you try to colonize Mars—Russia try to occupy Ukraine! While your rockets successfully land from space—Russian rockets attack Ukrainian civil people!” Mykhailo Fedorov tweeted. “We ask you to provide Ukraine with Starlink stations.”
Starlink is Musk’s effort to make high-speed internet available anywhere on Earth using thousands of satellites sprinkled in orbit around Earth. Since Russia’s attack on Ukraine began last week, many in the country have experienced internet disruptions, particularly in cities such as Kharkiv, the epicenter of Russian violence against Ukrainian civilians. They fear that further outages could cut them off from the rest of the world.