Billionaire Elon Musk one-on-one “combat” challenge to President Vladimir Putin over Ukraine may have been ignored by the Kremlin, but other officials in Russia quickly intervened up defend their leader by attacking Musk online.
The eccentric CEO of Tesla Inc. on Monday tweeted: “I hereby challenge Vladimir Putin single combat”, with Ukraine as a stake.
Dmitry Rogozin, head of Russia space agency who in the past had denigrated Musk as a rival space rocket manufacturer, replied the same day by quoting a poem evoking a “young little devil, too weak to compete with me.”
Ramzan Kadyrov, the leader of the Russian region of Chechnya and an ally of Putin, addressed to Musk by the Russian woman first name Ilona, who sounds similar to Elon, telling him he didn’t have the force physics for fight Putin, a judo enthusiast and “the terror of the west.”
“Vladimir Vladimirovich (Putin) would have theair unsportsmanlike if he beat a weaker opponent like yourself,” Kadyrov wrote, suggesting that Musk should pump up some muscles first for “transform into a virile Elon of the tender Ilona.”
Musk hit back on Tuesday, telling Kadyrov in a tweet signed “Elona” that he would have “too of an advantage” after the training.
“If he’s afraid of fightI’m okay with use only my left main and I’m not even left-handed,” he wrote.
Pavel Durov, founder of Telegram announced on On Wednesday, he had reserved the profile name “Еlona” on son messaging app and was waiting for musk to start using this, with Kadyrov quickly suggesting that Durov changed at Ilona. Always, in a later post Kadyrov said he respected Musk for son character and strong will.
Asked about the online squabbles, Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Wednesday: “We don’t follow this. We didn’t read Twitter for a long moment.”
