Elon Musk still has friends out there.
His aerospace company Space X will deliver thousands of additional Starlink antennas to Ukraine in the coming months in order to maintain Internet service there.
Mykhailo Fedorov, the deputy prime minister, says he negotiated directly with Musk.
"When we had a severe blackout, I wrote to him the same day and he responded immediately."
Winand von Petersdorff-Campen
Economic correspondent in Washington.
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Musk understands the precarious situation, Fedorov praised.
Without Musk's previous antenna shipments, Ukraine's military would have trouble maintaining communications.
Musk apparently donated part, governments and various organizations paid for part.
Although Musk has caused irritation in the country with a proposal for a "peace plan", he is still a hero for many people here.
Of course, Musk doesn't feel so much admiration everywhere these days.
In fact, he is one of the most severely criticized entrepreneurial personalities, and not just since he entered politically sensitive territory with the takeover of Twitter.
In the left-wing political camp in particular, he is increasingly seen as an enemy.
Remarkable turnaround
That needs some explanation, after all, his entrepreneurial portfolio comes across as extremely green and people-friendly.
Against much odds, Musk has successfully launched sleek electric cars and revolutionized space travel with reusable rockets.
He equips houses with solar modules, brings the Internet to crisis regions and promotes a new local transport concept with underground tunnels.
The claim that is often made in Silicon Valley to make the world a better place is not as easy to dismiss as empty phrases as it is for many other entrepreneurs.
Still, people rub shoulders with him, and Musk is contributing to that himself.
Loudmouth, he loves provocation and cultivates his reputation as an eccentric.
When he was allowed to moderate the American cult show “Saturday Night Live” last year, he asked the audience: “I have reinvented electric cars and I am sending people to Mars in a spaceship.
Did you actually think I was just your ordinary chilled-out guy?” In other words, someone of his caliber should be allowed to be cranky.
Or even find her charming.
But not everyone is willing to acknowledge Musk as the model entrepreneur he sees himself as.
US President Joe Biden has treated him with contempt and ridicule, at times it seemed that he was demonstratively ignoring him.
When he talks about electric cars, he avoids the word Tesla as much as possible.
Musk reacts with bullying at schoolyard level
In the extensive funding plans for electric cars, he wanted to accommodate regulations that other manufacturers would have preferred to Tesla.
He likes to mention how Ford and General Motors create new jobs, while Tesla's factories in California or Texas with tens of thousands of jobs remain unmentioned.
It seems almost childish, and Musk has countered with bullying at schoolyard level.
He called Biden a "wet sock puppet in human form."