Elon Musk and Russian President Vladimir Putin have been having regular “secret conversations” over the last two years, according to a new report in the Wall Street Journal.
The WSJ cited current and former US, European and Russian officials, who told them Musk and Putin spoke about a range of issues, from business and geopolitics to their personal lives.
Among the revelations intended to be most damaging is the claim that Putin asked Musk not to activate his Starlink satellite internet service over Taiwan, as a favor to Chinese premier Xi Jinping. Russia has come to rely heavily on China for trade as a result of Western sanctions due to the Ukraine war.
Other claims include that Russia made “implicit threats” against Musk after he donated Starlink terminals to Ukraine’s armed forces, saying he would “answer like an adult” for his actions. It’s claimed that Musk then began having regular contact with Russian officials, and that his public stance on the Ukraine war hardened.
Two sources apparently confirmed to the WSJ that Musk and Putin remain in contact.
This report is said to “raise security concerns,” particularly with Elon Musk’s open support of Donald Trump for president.
“The report is concerning given that Musk, the world’s richest man, has become one of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s key supporters and sources of cash in the 2024 election,” comments Rolling Stone, for example.
It’s also being suggested, for example in The Kyiv Independent, that Musk’s supposed association with Putin may explain the changes he’s made to Twitter since acquiring it in 2022.
“Since Musk acquired X (formerly known as Twitter), experts have pointed out a sharp rise of disinformation, hate speech, and radical and pro-authoritarian content on the platform,” the Independent writes.
“Musk, an avid user of the platform himself, used it to speak out against the passage of a Ukraine aid bill earlier this year and said that ‘there is no way in hell’ that Russia could lose the war.”
The Kremlin has denied communicating with Musk, and White House officials said they were not aware of any contact between Musk and Putin. Musk said he had only spoken with Putin once in 2021 about space-related topics.