The whimsical billionaire Elon Musk challenged Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday in a “man-to-man fight” with Ukraine, the scene of an offensive by the Russian army for nearly three weeks.
KEYSTONE
“I hereby challenge Vladimir Putin to a man-to-man fight. The stake is Ukraine”, wrote on Twitter the founder of the space company SpaceX, without specifying the form that this duel would take. “Do you accept this fight?” he asked in another message in Russian, addressing the official Kremlin Twitter account.
And faced with the incomprehension of a surfer, Elon Musk assured that he was “completely serious”. The South African-born billionaire had previously thrown his support behind Kiev, tweeting “Ukraine, hold on” in early March, while sending his “friends to the great people of Russia, who don’t want” war.
He also responded to a call for help from a Ukrainian official by activating the Starlink satellite internet service in Ukraine and sending equipment there, to help bring internet connectivity to areas hit by military assaults. Russian.
The billionaire is accustomed to controversy on Twitter, where he has more than 77 million subscribers.
In February, he accused the American stock exchange regulator, which had imposed several sanctions on him, of seeking to muzzle his freedom of expression, and he compared Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to Adolf Hitler in a message of support for opponents of the health restrictions imposed by the government. He then deleted that post.
AFP