Ukraine awards Elon Musk high state honor as it seeks to expand Starlink access

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has bestowed one of Ukraine’s top state honors on SpaceX owner Elon Musk as ​Kyiv seeks to expand use of the company’s Starlink ‌terminals, which provide battlefield communications for Ukrainian forces.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has bestowed one of Ukraine’s top state honors 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.