Billionaire Elon Musk has promised to carry on funding Ukraine’s Starlink internet service a day after tweeting a threat to pull out.

On Saturday, Musk said his rocket company SpaceX would continue to fund its Starlink internet service in Ukraine, a day after he said it could no longer afford to do so.

‘The hell with it … even though starlink is still losing money & other companies are getting billions of taxpayer $, we’ll just keep funding ukraine govt for free’ Musk tweeted.

This seems to be a U-turn on Friday’s tweet where he said that SpaceX could not indefinitely fund Starlink in Ukraine.

The SpaceX boss had complained the company was paying £17.8 million a month to keep the service going while defence giants such as Lockheed Martin were paid by the US to arm Ukrainian forces.

Musk has previously upset Ukraine by suggesting that Crimea – which Putin grabbed illegally in 2014 – should be recognised as part of Russia.

But vice-prime minister Mykhailo Fedorov downplayed tensions, hailing the tycoon as ‘among the world’s top private donors supporting Ukraine’.

Although it was not immediately clear whether Musk’s change of mind was genuine, he later appeared to indicate it was.

When a Twitter user told Musk ‘No good deed goes unpunished’, he replied ‘Even so, we should still do good deeds’.

The billionaire has been in online fights with Ukrainian officials over a peace plan he put forward which Ukraine says is too generous to Russia.

He had made his Friday remarks about funding after a media report that SpaceX had asked the Pentagon to pay for the donations of Starlink.

On Friday, US officials confirmed Musk had asked the Pentagon to take over funding the service in Ukraine. They said no decision had been taken on the matter.

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