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Poland’s Sikorski asks ‘big man’ Musk if he is playing politics with Starlink in Ukraine

By Thomson Reuters Oct 14, 2026 | 4:32 AM

WARSAW, Oct 14 (Reuters) – Poland’s foreign minister asked Elon Musk if he was “playing politics” with Starlink in Ukraine ​on Wednesday, after Kyiv said Space ‌X had introduced a limit on some services, disrupting combat drone missions.

Poland has said that it pays for Kyiv’s Starlink subscription, which ‌is ​vital for guiding longer-range ⁠drone strikes in occupied ⁠southern and eastern Ukraine that have wreaked havoc on Russian logistics.

“Hey, @elonmusk, big man, are you playing politics with your ​products again?” Sikorski wrote in a post on X. “As your European customers, ⁠we are watching you.”

There ⁠was no immediate response to ​the post from Musk.

The “big man” jibe referred back ​to an extraordinarily public dispute on ‌social media between Sikorski, Musk and US Secretary of State Marco Rubio in 2025, when the Tesla and Space X ⁠boss told Sikorski to “Be quiet, small man.”

That clash broke out when Musk said that Ukraine’s “entire ⁠front line ‌would collapse if I turned ⁠it (Starlink) off”.

He later said that “no ​matter ‌how much I disagree with ​the Ukraine ⁠policy, Starlink will never turn off its terminals … We would never do such a thing or use it as a bargaining chip.”

(Reporting by Alan Charlish; editing by ​Philippa Fletcher)