Tech tycoon Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX and one of the world’s richest people, has maintained regular contact with Vladimir Putin and other Kremlin officials since 2022, The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported on Friday.
Citing anonymous current and former officials from Russia, the US and Europe, the WSJ said Musk and Putin held frequent discussions touching on “personal topics, business and geopolitical tensions”.
While Musk had previously shown strong support for Ukraine, donating hundreds of Starlink remote internet terminals to Kyiv after Russia began its full-scale invasion of the country in February 2022, he was in regular communication with “high-level Russians” later that year, one of the WSJ’s sources said.
These contacts coincided with a marked change in Musk’s public stance on the war as the Kremlin put pressure on his businesses and made “implicit threats against him”, the source continued. In October 2022, Musk drew criticism from Kyiv by asking his X followers to vote on a proposal to end the war that included recognising annexed Crimea as part of Russia and Ukraine remaining politically neutral.
In one conversation in late 2023, Putin asked Musk not to activate his Starlink internet service over Taiwan as a “favour” to Chinese President and key Kremlin ally Xi Jinping, two of the sources told the WSJ.
Aside from Putin, Musk reportedly also spoke with his senior aide Sergey Kiriyenko, whom the US Justice Department accused in September of creating over 30 internet domains to spread Russian disinformation aimed at reducing support for Ukraine and influencing voters in the run-up to the US presidential election.
Musk has previously called claims he is an apologist for Putin “absurd” and has said his companies “have done more to undermine Russia than anything”, the WSJ noted.
Both Musk and the Kremlin have maintained that the only communication between Musk and Putin was a single telephone call in 2021, in which the pair discussed “space as well as current and future technologies”.