From the Moscow Times:
“Elon Musk Held Secret Talks
With Putin Amid Shifting Views on Ukraine – WSJ”
U.S. billionaire Elon Musk held
secret talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin throughout the war in
Ukraine as his initial support for Kyiv appeared to shift in Moscow’s favor,
the Wall Street Journal reported Thursday, citing several anonymous current and
ex-U.S., European and Russian officials. The private conversations reportedly
addressed personal topics, business and geopolitical tensions, and took place
between October 2022 — when he proposed a controversial peace deal — and “into
this year.” One current and one former intelligence source were cited as saying
the contacts with Putin continued as Musk began increasingly criticizing U.S.
military aid to Ukraine and endorsed former President Donald Trump’s latest bid
for office. WSJ noted that Musk’s alleged engagement with Putin comes amid
Trump’s proposal to cut a deal over the war in Ukraine.
The newspaper also reported that
the billionaire was having regular conversations with “high-level Russians,”
including Putin’s first deputy chief of staff Sergei Kiriyenko, amid pressure
from the Kremlin on Musk’s businesses and “implicit threats against him.” “They
[the U.S. government] don’t love it,” one source was quoted as saying,
referring to the reported Musk-Putin contacts, but adding that the Biden
administration has not yet raised alerts over possible security breaches. Kremlin
spokesman Dmitry Peskov told WSJ that Musk and Putin had only one phone call,
in which they discussed “space as well as current and future technologies.” The
billionaire, who did not respond to the newspaper’s request for comment, said
in October 2022 that he had discussed space with Putin in April 2021. WSJ
reported that Putin asked Musk to not activate his Starlink satellite internet
service over Taiwan as a favor to Chinese leader Xi Jinping. Starlink does not
currently provide service to the island nation. The Kremlin later on Friday
denied the allegations in WSJ’s report, saying “It’s all untrue.” “Putin had
only one conversation with Musk. It was reported, and it happened before 2022,”
Peskov told journalists at a daily briefing. “They talked about visionary
technologies, technological solutions for the future.”
^ Someone should look into this
and see if it is true or not. ^
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