New Delhi: Elon Musk has denied speaking to Russian President Vladimir Putin before he tweeted about Ukraine. The Tesla boss said he spoke to Putin 18 months ago and that too about space. When asked by an investor, Sven Henrich, if the report about him speaking to Putin before the tweet on Ukraine was true, Musk said, "No, it is not. I have spoken to Putin only once and that was about 18 months ago. The subject matter was space.”
In a newsletter issued on October 3, Eurasia Group founder and political scientist Ian Bremmer claimed that Musk informed him about speaking to Putin and Kremlin about Ukraine. Bremmer wrote that Musk told him that Russia was prepared to negotiate with Ukraine if Crimea remained Russian and if Ukraine accepted a form of permanent neutrality and recognised Russia’s annexation of Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia.
Bremmer reiterated his claim in a Twitter thread and said that Musk had told him he spoke with Putin and the Kremlin directly about Ukraine. He said that he has been writing his newsletter for 24 years and that while he admires Musk as an entrepreneur, "he is not a geopolitics expert".
Last week, the Tesla CEO, in a Twitter poll, posted a "Ukraine-Russia Peace plan", which essentially covered all the points claimed by Bremmer although he suggested referendums in the annexed territories under the supervision of the United Nations. In the thread, Musk wrote that it is likely the outcome and that it is "worth noting" and a possible outcome of the Ukraine-Russia conflict is nuclear war.
The poll thread drew sharp criticism from Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Russia-born human rights activist and former chess champion Garry Kasparov. Zelenskyy on Twitter created his own poll to ask which Elon Musk people like more.
Ukrainian ambassador to Germany, Andrij Melnyk said "F--- off, is my very diplomatic reply to you @elonmusk".
Earlier, Musk was praised as SpaceX activated Starlink satellite internet service to keep parts of Ukraine online during the earlier days of the conflict. Thousands of Starlink terminals were either donated, purchased by the US government or crowdfunded by donors to help Ukrainian troops to operate drones, receive vital intelligence updates and communicate with each other. According to a Financial Times report, these have suffered outages which led to "catastrophic" loss of communication, a senior leader said.
However, Bremmer in his newsletter wrote that he had refused Ukraine's request to activate the Starlink in Crimea.