Tesla boss Elon Musk has sparked fury with Ukraine officials after a series of tweets urging the nation to give up land claimed by Russia and seek a negotiated peace to the seven-month-old invasion.
The tech billionaire suggested a United Nations-supervised election be held in regions annexed by Russia – and Russian troops should leave “if that is the will of the people”.
In a poll of his 107 million Twitter followers on Monday morning (Australian time), Mr Musk also advised Ukraine to allow its Crimea region to be formally declared a part of Russia. He said that the disputed territory “has been” Russian territory under 1783 “until Khrushchev’s mistake”.
“This is highly likely to be the outcome in the end – just a question of how many die before then,” Mr Musk wrote.
“Also worth noting that a possible, albeit unlikely, outcome from this conflict is nuclear war.”
“F— off is my very diplomatic reply to you,” Ukraine’s outgoing ambassador to Germany, Andrij Melnyk, wrote in response to Mr Musk’s tweets.
“The only outcome is that now no Ukrainian will EVER buy your f—ing Tesla crap. So good luck to you.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky followed up with his own poll, asking his followers “Which Elon Musk do you like more?” – with the options “One who supports Ukraine” and “One who supports Russia”.
The first had an overwhelming majority of the votes.
Mr Musk was also criticised by some of his most ardent fans. SpaceX aerospace engineer Sid Chambers urged him to “snap out of it, E”.
“You are using [P]utin propaganda talking points,” she wrote.
“Fix this.”
One of Mr Zelensky’s advisers, Mykhailo Podolyak, responded with his own version of Mr Musk’s poll:
There was also support from Lithuania, which has been one of the strongest Ukraine allies throughout the Russian conflict.
“Dear Elon Musk, when someone tries to steal the wheels of your Tesla, it doesn’t make them legal owner of the car or of the wheels. Even though they claim both voted in favour of it. Just saying,” President Gitanas Nausėda tweeted.
The outrage from Ukraine was all the more notable because Mr Musk has become something of a hero in the European nation since Russia invaded in February.
His Starlink satellite communication system has allowed Ukrainians and the Ukrainian military to bypass internet outages that have plagued the country.
Ukraine crosses Russian lines as advances continue
Mr Musk’s bizarre tweets came as Ukrainian forces achieved their biggest breakthrough in the country’s south since the war began.
They have burst through Russian defences and advanced rapidly along the Dnipro River, threatening supply lines for thousands of Russian troops.
In a sign Ukraine is building momentum on two fronts, 300 kilometres to the north-east Reuters saw columns of Ukrainian troop vehicles heading to reinforce rail hub Lyman, retaken at the weekend and a staging post to press into the Donbas region.
Kyiv gave little information about the gains in the south, but Russian sources acknowledged that Ukrainian troops had advanced dozens of kilometres along the river’s west bank, recapturing a number of villages along the way.
The breakthrough mirrors the recent Ukrainian successes in the east that have turned the tide in the war, even as Moscow has tried to raise the stakes by annexing territory, ordering mobilisation and threatening nuclear retaliation.
-with AAP
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