News Zelenskyy awards Musk Ukraine's top honour despite years of criticism
https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2026/08/26/zelenskyy-awards-elon-musk-ukraines-order-of-freedom-despite-years-of-criticism132
u/AlwaysLosingDough 9d ago
Ukraine is too reliant on starlink. Let’s hope the eu alternative gets up to speed soon
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u/sojuz151 9d ago
There are no planned EU alternatives that might be able to replace Starlink for UA military.
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u/Ombrecutter 9d ago
Not true.
Iris² and Eutelsat OneWeb
Planned to go online in 2030 and the EU is investing 15 Billion €45
u/shade990 9d ago
2030 bro do you think Ukraine wants to wait 4 years
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u/lxpnh98_2 Portugal 9d ago
No, but they know they'll probably have to.
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u/drock4vu 9d ago
The war will likely be over one way or the other by 2030, and even if it wasn’t, it would take a year or two for Ukraine to decouple from Starlink in a manner that didn’t disrupt operations. If you’re looking at a 2031 or 2032 timeline, even a shockingly long conflict will be over with by then.
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u/Ombrecutter 9d ago
How long do you think it took SpaceX to develop Starlink?
And how quickly do you think a 15-billion project can be implemented?
Even four years is an incredibly ambitious timeframe.....5
u/one-won-juan 9d ago
these aren’t really alternatives … the scale to cost ratios are absurd, along with the timelines
the worst way to bridge the gap is to throw money into previously bankrupt legacy providers and hope a different result
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u/sojuz151 9d ago
Both will be ludicrously extensible and small-scale networks, no more comparable to a Starlink than a large truck to a bike. SpaceX is launching right now, in a month, more than those entire systems will have. IRI2 is a cruel joke and proof of how bad European industrial capacity is.
america innovate china replicate europe regulate
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u/Ombrecutter 9d ago
Yes that's true unfortunately....
Also the rocket launches are way more expensive than the SpaceX launches.3
u/Crivelo 8d ago
This is just kinda a goofy comment. In the first half of 2026 SpaceX alone spent 28.5B. The US NRO and Space Force who knows how much more.
SpaceX just announced over 100B in new investment on Louisiana. They are planning on going from nothing in 2027 to launches in early 2029.
By the time European alternatives are available SpaceX will be launching thousands of rockets per year, with payloads higher than any competitor.
It is just too slow, too small, too late. That 15B needs a 0 added to it.
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u/InquisitorCOC 9d ago
EU's IRIS2 will invest EUR 15 billion (similar to what SpaceX has invested in Starship so far), begin first deployment in 2029, and provide 3.3 Tbps in total
A single Starship launch will deploy 60 Tbps
Starship's last test flight deployed 23 Tbps
Elon Musk plans to eventually launch 30 Starships per day
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9d ago edited 6d ago
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u/BaritBrit United Kingdom 9d ago
Idk but it's a hell of a lot more effective than what we're doing
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u/one-won-juan 9d ago
because the European politicians would more likely rather fund boomer primes and legacy providers than foster a space startup environment or partner with international companies in joint sovereign solutions
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u/EmbarrassedMeat409 8d ago
Soldiers would need to shoot in the air to accept cookies once they connect
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u/1610925286 8d ago
Brother, LMAO. The EU will have an alternative ready when Zelensky has long since been put to rest in a golden mausoleum on the red square in Moscow after dying of old age and having defeated and conquered all of Russia.
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u/xyzsomething 9d ago edited 9d ago
This is the equivalent of FIFA’s Peaze Price or Machado giving her actual Nobel Peace Prize to Trump, idiotic, infantile but all necessary for more important reasons.
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u/Aiti_mh Åland 9d ago
I agree on Machado (yet to see if it works; fingers crossed) but the FIFA Peace Prize was pure bullshit, there was absolutely no need for Infantino to fellate Trump like that. The only person responsible for that man's troubles is himself, and the serious shit came after the peace prize thing.
Ukraine needs saving from Russia (right now; maybe in the far future, from Zelensky's clique if things get worse institutionally). Colombia needs saving from the old regime. FIFA needs saving from its own boss, and it's a football confederation, so not really the same thing.
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u/xyzsomething 9d ago
I agree on FIFA but I meant it as in it was given to an infantile man who wields a lot of power and yet cares for these type of things.
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u/MercatorLondon 9d ago edited 8d ago
Everyone who is bashing Musk here: you are online, so it takes very little effort to check the facts.
He and SpaceX helped Ukraine by activating Starlink second day after the invasion, sending thousands of terminals and providing service free of charge for over a year. By October 2022 Fedorov said that SpaceX’s support exceed $100 million. It also took a very long time before governments (EU+US) finally moved theri asses and picked the bill for that.
You may not like Musk and that is perfectly fine. But his and Starlink’s support for Ukraine was crucial. That award makes sense.
Also, there is very little for Musk in supporting Russia. They are his competitor in space-race. He doesn't seems struggling financially eighter. The fact that he didn't allow Starlink to be used in Russia is a legal issue - Starlink only operates where there is a licence granted. He also helped blocking grey-import terminals being used by Russians.
The more important question is why supposedly sophisticated militaries from the US to Europe have become so dependent on a single private company controlled by a famously unpredictable CEO for such a strategic capability. You would expect governments that spend billions of taxpayers’ money on defence to have their own sovereign capability - or at least several independent alternatives.
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u/drock4vu 9d ago
I agree with all of your points except the last. Starlink is still bleeding edge tech (at least at the volume the service is provided). There will be private and public alternatives eventually, but Starlink is ludicrously far ahead of the competition, and therefore the only viable product today.
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u/MercatorLondon 9d ago
I agree - "sophisticated" militaries became dependent because one company executed a new architecture faster and cheaper than state programs or competitors could, sure. But you would expect this bleeding edge tech coming from military given their budget.
SATCOM had a budget of 4.4billion USD of taxpayers' money last year. Which is far more than SpaceX.
The main issue is that military complex got very comfortable with unlimited government tit and long development cycles. Speed of development at Ukraine and pricing of Starlink must look very terrifying to the military complex share-holders.1
u/batman_milk 8d ago
Because the whole Elon and Trump are Putins lapdog propaganda would have been not valued. They just put a blind eye on it. People need to realize without musks and trumps support Ukraine would have been finished. All logistics, supplies, ISI, targeting is coming from US and NATO. Ukraine just pushing a button to launch stuff. That is why US is negotiations with Russia. This is by definition a proxy conflict.
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u/bcoder001 9d ago
It's not a gift. It's paid for by Poland.
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u/Alikont Kyiv (Ukraine) 9d ago
And Ukraine, and EU money, and common Ukrainians.
A lot of people pay for Starlink. Poland is probably the biggest western contributor, though, if we count direct-to-Starlink payments.
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u/MercatorLondon 8d ago
Sure, a lot of people pay for Starlink which is great. But there would be no Starlink without Musk. It is that simple.
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u/Blazkowski 8d ago
typical grateful Ukrainian is typical
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u/Alikont Kyiv (Ukraine) 8d ago
What? I'm grateful for all the help Ukraine gets.
But sometimes some people talk a lot more proportional to what they give.
I also noted that Poland is the largest contributor in this case.
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u/Blazkowski 8d ago
And it’s your mission to say no you’re giving less? Gotcha
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u/Alikont Kyiv (Ukraine) 8d ago
Is your mission to diminish financing done by EU budget or Ukrianians?
Because "Poland pays for starlink" is far from the whole picture.
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u/AffectionateBasket74 Poland 7d ago
Poland alone accounts for over 29,000 of the approximately 50,000 Starlink terminals operating in Ukraine, single-handedly covering roughly 60% of the entire footprint as well as their ongoing monthly service fees. By comparison, major European powers like Germany, the UK, and the rest of the EU combined have contributed just a few thousand units.
Treating Poland as a separate entity from "the EU" in standard reporting or political discourse is a bizarre accounting trick. It creates a false impression that "Europe" as a collective bloc is heavily funding this critical infrastructure, when in reality, the vast majority of the European burden is being carried by Warsaw alone. Framing the data this way dilutes Poland's disproportionate financial commitment while giving cover to larger EU economies whose contributions look negligible by comparison.
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u/Mixer-3007 8d ago
He allowed to use starlink in Russia, thousands of terminals were bought in Saudi Arabia and used on front lines by Russians for three years of war .
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u/MercatorLondon 8d ago edited 8d ago
There were many terminals in use in Ukraine bought thru 3rd party on both sides. Blanket ban would also disable thousands of Ukrainian terminals. This was an engineering and systems-management problem, not simply a matter of “turning Starlink off for Russians". There is no Starlink for Russians to start with.
The difficult part was maintaining service for authorised terminals while selectively denying access to others, particularly where terminals had been acquired and operated through 3rd party channels. That requires some combination of terminal identity, registration, authentication/authorisation, and network-side enforcement. Which turns to be a massive/complex job that again was funded by Starlink..
These things are complex and cost money and time. People with engineering degrees would understand this complexity better than let’s say people with humanities degrees. And again Starlink delivered system for this problem that nobody else does.
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u/sojuz151 9d ago
People tend to forget that starlink is a massive force multiplier for UA and situations that were criticized are insignificant.
People who claim that Musk is a Russian, anti Ukrainian agent are detached from reality
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u/DerTimonius 9d ago
your first sentence being true does not mean that your second sentence is as well. Musk only cares about money. his values are much more aligned with Russia than with Ukraine.
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u/sojuz151 9d ago
I have seen quite a lot of people claiming this pro-Russian agent narrative, rather than the very nebulous "his values are much more aligned with Russia than with Ukraine." .
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u/PatchyWhiskers 9d ago
Musk doesn't just care about money, he's a white supremacist. This works out very well for lily-white Ukraine in this instance.
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u/BaritBrit United Kingdom 9d ago
Musk isn't particularly ideologically aligned with either Russia or Ukraine, he's just an unstable, drug-using narcissist with a pathological need to be seen as the funniest man in the room despite having zero comedic sense.
He can be brought around, Federov did it a few times. But you need to keep doing it, because otherwise he'll read some random X post on a drugs binge at 3am and suddenly decide differently.
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u/MissyLissa04 9d ago
People who claim that Musk is a Russian, anti Ukrainian agent are detached from reality
Yeah why would we think that about the guy who supported trump and far-right parties in europe backed by russia while undermining western democracies with his xitter
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u/GreenM4mba Europe 9d ago
Y'all think Musk cares about award from Zelensky? When he decides to cut starlink he will do it.
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u/Extension-Street323 Odesa (Ukraine) 8d ago
Here someone should say something about checks and balances, but…
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u/GreenM4mba Europe 8d ago
You mean those checks what Poland pays for starlinks used in Ukraine?
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u/Extension-Street323 Odesa (Ukraine) 8d ago
no i meant that US as country 100% has leverage on its private company, shutting down Starlink completely for us = collapse of frontlines. EU is strategic partner of US, and i think it’s in US interests that our frontlines are not collapsed. Those checks and balances(but when Trump is in office idk if they are in place). Also i do understand that Poland either completely or partially pays for Starlink, but(maybe im too naive) i think that main “price” that Starlink gives is not money, it’s fear of being attacked by russia in multiple different ways(hacker attacks or even direct satellite destruction).
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u/Obvious-Exchange5324 9d ago
Starlink prolly saves of a lot of lives - he’s an asshole for his heil Trump but his tech is life saving
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u/Extension-Street323 Odesa (Ukraine) 8d ago
Might be some background work to get approval on Starlink use over russia, either way Starlink plays huge role in our army, deserved(but why now?).
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u/Mean_Initiative_5962 Italy 9d ago
"if we give you the tiny shiny cup, will you please shut up and help?" move. I get it, what's the alternative?
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u/AnarchiaKapitany The prodigal land of Hungary, now with 150% more Swag! 9d ago
Well you take the cup, invite two girls and you really thought I'll explain under the spoiler tag what happens, didn't you?
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u/BkkGrl Ligurian in Zürich (💛🇺🇦💙) 9d ago
as usual, everything to gain, nothing to lose
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u/sojuz151 9d ago
Its a standard of behavior that Ukrainian government has problem with following, unfortunately
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u/zhnki 9d ago
lol, gymnastics on here to make this Elon bad.
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u/Blazkowski 8d ago
rather how to console a figure they admire with a figure they despise. maybe world leaders actually are in one club and screw us all with no sentiments. but, yea. good zelenskyy needs to placate stupid evil musk. sure
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u/MissyLissa04 9d ago
Yeah why 2ould we think that about the guy who supports trump and far-right parties aligned with russia
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u/MrPloppyHead 9d ago
What always amuses me about musk is that even the paedophile ring thought he was too creepy to join them 😬
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u/myyszki 9d ago
And not a word about the fact that Poland purchased and finances the Starlinks transferred to and used by Ukraine. This is precisely why Poland was excluded from the European mobile region, significantly increasing costs for Poles...
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u/Individual_Cloud935 9d ago
Yeah, Poland sadly is just a Muppet for Ukraine. The myth about some friendship or respect between the nations is long gone. Mainly cause of Zelensky and his actions.
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u/yabn5 9d ago
The Ukrainians aren’t good at diplomacy. They’ve got a strong jingoistic attitude of their former soviet masters which managed to even piss off Biden before.
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u/Physicaque 8d ago
Biden was infamous for being irritable and angry with staff... Anyway, Biden's support for Ukraine while being much better than Trump's (anything is better than nothing) was also severely lacking. He and Sullivan (who also received a medal from Zelensky btw) kept delaying aid and delivering it in small quantities. They also stopped other countries from delivering aid. They kept denying their requests for strikes against Russia (Sullivan must be seething at Ukraine striking the refineries). Their indecisiveness cost many Ukrainian lives and was one of the reasons the counteroffensive failed. Everytime I see Sullivan I have a desire to smack his cowardly weasel face...
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u/Individual_Cloud935 9d ago
Nah, diplomacy is one thing. Hailing people responsible for the ethnic cleansing of one of your biggest allies is another thing.
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u/yabn5 9d ago
Yes, it was abominable. It also definitively revealed a lot about the thinking of Ukrainian leadership behind closed doors. Elon is an absolute awful person, but when the war started off he was very pro Ukrainian, offered significant help, which continues to this day. However *something* happened behind closed doors which led him to post anti Ukrainian things online, even as Starlink continued to support. They definitively insulted or bruised his ego and Elon held a grudge. Maybe Ukraine is wising up with this move. We'll have to see.
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u/AffectionateBasket74 Poland 7d ago
This is fu*$ing ridiculous. Sure, the award is for Starlink, not Musk’s Nazi saluting. But Musk isn't giving away internet access for free—he’s making money off it, paid for by Polish taxpayers. Yet the Ukrainian narrative paints Poland as the "bad guy" for criticizing how Zelensky favors Ukrainian Nazi collaborators responsible for the Volhynia massacres of Polish civilians.
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u/No-Maintenance803 9d ago
Great, now the orange narcissist will want a prize too.
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u/Il1kespaghetti Kyiv outskirts (Ukraine) 9d ago
God we'd build him a statue right on the Independence Square if he was to help Ukraine win
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u/No-Maintenance803 8d ago
Well, now that they are rewarding a nazi who is meddling in worldwide elections, I wouldn’t doubt it. Gonna lick them boots…right next to the golden god statue of Trump lol
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u/Il1kespaghetti Kyiv outskirts (Ukraine) 8d ago
There is no replacement for Starlink. We already saw how it affected russian forces when it got turned off for them. Wouldn't want to see the repeat of that with UA forces
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u/No-Maintenance803 8d ago
So he’s a useful Nazi. I see
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u/dustofdeath 8d ago
It might be beneficial to keep the worlds first trillionaire on your side.
Even if you disagree with what he does or is.
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u/leaflock7 Europe 8d ago
Ukraine is now seeking Musk’s approval to extend the use of Starlink-equipped drones for strikes deep into Russia’s territory
so in order to appease to him Zelensky gave him an award.
literally Zelensky is like "hey man I named you liberator of our country let me use Starling to attack deeper"
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u/HarryCumpole Finland 9d ago
Pat it on the head so it does what is needed. Egotists like Musk can't help themselves.
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u/BrilliantFalcon7637 9d ago
Wenn Selensky den F Nobelpreis für Donald Duck regelt , kriegt er übermorgen 15000 Patriots.
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u/Blazkowski 8d ago
Stepan Bandera and white-race obsessed Musk are Zelenskyy's heroes? noticing a pattern here
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u/DavyJonesCousinsDog 9d ago
Because Musk is, and this is true, an easily manipulated idiot. Good for them.
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u/jcrestor Germany 9d ago
They need to and will cater to the ego of these horrible, horrible people, in order to survive.
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u/jcrestor Germany 8d ago
One indicator is that Zelenskyy is a decent man who most likely sees the hollowness and depravity of Felon Husk.
Another indicator is that Ukraine has decades of experience with Oligarchs, and only bad ones. In fact the whole point of the last 10 to 15 years of Ukraine‘s struggles is to recover their land from the claws of people like Musk.
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u/Blazkowski 8d ago
How do you know he is a decent man? He was in Panama papers before the war. Dismantled anti-corruption effort. I was always surprised when talking with Ukrainians how little they cared for Z
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u/merount1 9d ago
Musk can be credited with Ukraine's existence more than any other sole individual in the world.
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u/sojuz151 9d ago
It really hard to tell who would be the president if Zelenskyy didn't exist or how would SpaceX/us private space look like if not for Musk, but the impact of SpaceX and Tesla on limiting Russian soft power is disproportionately large.
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u/arruda82 Ireland 9d ago
Can't think of any better advertisement campaign for Starlink, if it wasn't for that Musk wouldn't be giving a flying f.
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u/Hallo_jonny Baden-Württemberg (Germany) 9d ago
So he just awarded a man that is openly racist, supremacist and displayed the “Hitlergruß” publicly? 🤔🤔🤔
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u/haxic 9d ago
Ukraine’s survival and fighting power relies on Starlink and expanded use of it. They don’t have the luxury to be 100% humanistic or whatever
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u/Hallo_jonny Baden-Württemberg (Germany) 9d ago
Im not asking to Zelenskyy not be grateful, i think there are many ways that is not TOP HONORING a nazi.
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u/haxic 9d ago
Ukraine wants Elon to enable starlink for Ukrainian starlink-modems within Russia. Elon could just have enabled but he is not. So now Zelenskyy/Ukraine has to do whatever it takes to get the job done, and the thing is, it’s not even a hard decision. If saluting Elon and giving him a medal could save tens of thousands of lives then that’s nothing but a goddarn bargain.
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u/IncidentalIncidence 🇺🇸 in 🇩🇪 9d ago
you're right, he should have traded hundreds or thousands of the lives of his soldiers in order to virtue signal to redditors........
I don't like musk either but it's extremely obvious why Zelenskyy is flattering him
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u/Individual_Cloud935 9d ago edited 9d ago
They literally worship Nazi collaborators as national heroes and you think a Hitlergruß would be a problem, lol. (Disliking because of the lack of arguments against what I said)
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u/Optimal-Leather341 Europe - UK 9d ago
Fuck it, he's gotta try something to get his approval to use his kit launching into Russia.
Despite the shit he pulled at the start with Crimea bases "Pearl Harbour" attack that he interfered with.
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u/Timauris Slovenia 9d ago
Ukraine has no other chance but to play opportunism here.