Marco Rubio and Elon Musk set aside their bad blood on Sunday to demand a “thank you” from Poland for the satellite internet services the billionaire’s Starlink provides to the Ukrainian army.
In an X post bragging about how he once challenged Russian President Vladimir Putin to a fistfight over the Ukraine war, Musk said the Starlink system developed by his rocket company SpaceX is “the backbone of the Ukrainian army.”
“Their entire front line would collapse if I turned it off,” he wrote.
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Radosław Sikorski, Poland’s foreign affairs minister, saw the post as a threat.
“Starlinks for Ukraine are paid for by the Polish Digitization Ministry at the cost of about $50 million per year,” he said in reply to the SpaceX CEO. “The ethics of threatening the victim of aggression apart, if SpaceX proves to be an unreliable provider we will be forced to look for other suppliers.”
Before Musk could respond, an unlikely ally stepped in to defend Starlink: Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who reportedly blew up at the billionaire last week in a tense Cabinet meeting shouting match.
Rubio accused Sikorski of “just making things up.”
“No one has made any threats about cutting Ukraine off from Starlink,” he said on X. “And say thank you because without Starlink Ukraine would have lost this war long ago and Russians would be on the border with Poland right now.”
Rubio seemingly forgot that Poland shares a border with Russia’s Kaliningrad province, which means that Russians are, quite literally, on the country’s border.
Minutes later, Musk returned to the conversation with his own retort to the Polish official: “Be quiet, small man. You pay a tiny fraction of the cost. And there is no substitute for Starlink.”
Sikorski backed down, thanking Rubio for “for confirming that the brave soldiers of Ukraine can count on the vital internet service provided jointly by the U.S. and Poland.”
But it wasn’t just the Polish minister who saw Musk’s initial post as a threat to cut off Starlink’s services in Ukraine.
Musk issued a clarification in response to other users who called him out for seemingly “threatening” to shut down the satellite internet service.
“To be extremely clear, no matter how much I disagree with the Ukraine policy, Starlink will never turn off its terminals,” the billionaire said. “I am simply stating that, without Starlink, the Ukrainian lines would collapse, as the Russians can jam all other communications! We would never do such a thing or use it as a bargaining chip.”
The New York Times last week reported that Musk and Rubio had a tense exchange in front of President Donald Trump during a recent Cabinet meeting.
Musk reportedly tore into the Secretary of State for failing to fire enough people, a mandate the billionaire has been carrying out through his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
Rubio, who according to the Times has been privately furious with Musk for dismantling USAID, countered that 1,500 State Department staff had already taken an early retirement offer.
Trump reportedly sat back watching the exchange with his arms crossed, later stepping in to say that Rubio was doing “a great job” and that everyone needed to work together.
