Aug 26 (Reuters) – President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has bestowed one of Ukraine’s top state honours on SpaceX owner Elon Musk as Kyiv seeks to expand use of the company’s Starlink terminals, which provide battlefield communications for Ukrainian forces.
Under a presidential decree published on the presidential website on Wednesday, Musk was awarded the Order of Freedom.
The decree praised Musk “for outstanding personal contributions to protecting human life and freedom, and for developing relations between the peoples of Ukraine and the United States of America.”
Musk switched on the Starlink satellite internet service over Ukraine shortly after Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022. It has become the lifeblood of Ukraine’s battlefield communications and a tool for piloting drones.
Musk agreed to turn off thousands of Russian “grey-market” Starlinks in Ukraine this year, causing problems for Russian forces, at the behest of former Defence Minister Mykhailo Fedorov before he was dismissed in July.
Ukraine has now asked to use Starlink over Russian territory as it seeks to attack targets including launchers for ballistic missiles that are wreaking destruction on Ukrainian cities.
Zelenskiy has said he was told that Musk opposed the move as a “major escalation” of the war, but that Ukraine had “started to receive a different, more encouraging feedback.”
Using Starlink over Russian territory could reduce capabilities that Russia is relying on to drag out the war, Zelenskiy said.
(Reporting by Anna Pruchnicka in Gdansk; Editing by Daniel Flynn and Timothy Heritage)
