Elon Musk has denied a report that he spoke to Vladimir Putin, including about the potential for using nuclear weapons, before floating a peace plan that suggested that Ukraine cede territory to Russia.
The head of the Eurasia Group political risk consultancy, who made the original claim, had insisted that his source was Musk himself. “Elon Musk told me he had spoken with Putin and the Kremlin directly about Ukraine,” Ian Bremmer said in a tweet after Musk’s tweeted denial. “He also told me what the kremlin’s red lines were.
“I have been writing my weekly newsletter on geopolitics for 24 yrs. I write honestly without fear or favor and this week’s update was no different.”
In a newsletter for Eurasia Group subscribers, Bremmer wrote that the Tesla CEO told him Putin was “prepared to negotiate”, but only if Crimea remained Russian, if Ukraine accepted a form of permanent neutrality, and Ukraine recognised Russia’s annexation of Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia. Such conditions would represent near-total Ukrainian capitulation at a time when their forces are on the offensive.
In the newsletter, first reported by Vice News, Bremmer said Musk claimed to have been told by Putin that those war aims would be achieved “no matter what”, including the potential use of a nuclear weapon if Ukraine retook territory in Crimea, which Russia annexed in 2014. Bremmer said Musk told him that “everything needed to be done to avoid that outcome”.
On 3 October, Musk provoked worldwide outrage by tweeting a proposal along similar lines, suggesting that Crimea was essentially Russian, and that sham referendums in four other occupied Ukrainian provinces should be redone under UN supervision, with Russia leaving only if they lost the vote. He suggested Ukraine would pledge long-term neutrality and guarantee the water supply to Crimea.
Musk put the proposals to an online vote, in which they were rejected. They were given prominence in Russian state media, but derided in Ukraine. The country’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, conducted a tongue-in-cheek poll of his own on “which Elon Musk” readers preferred: the one who supported Ukraine, or the one who supported Russia.
Musk denied having talked to the Russian leader before floating his ideas.
“I have spoken to Putin only once and that was about 18 months ago. The subject matter was space,” he said on Twitter.
