This just shows how much Elon Musk supports Ukraine. With this move, Musk took his support for Ukraine to another level. On Feb 24, Russia invaded Ukraine. Spacex has been sending terminals and other gear for its starlink satellite internet system to Ukraine, which has been struggling to maintain communications capabilities due to the invasion. Elon Musk, the company’s founder, tried to offer a simple way to bring this invasion to an end on March 14.
“I hereby challenge Vladimir Putin to single combat. Stakes are Ukraine” tweeted by Musk on Monday.
“Do you agree with this fight?” he asked (in Russian) in another tweet where Musk tagged @KremlinRissian_E, the official account of the Russian president. Musk didn’t receive any answer from the other side.
Dmitry Rogozin, the chief of Russia’s space agency Roscosmos, tweeted a passage from “The Tale of the Pope and his Worker Balda” by the famed Russian poet Alexander Pushkin (1799- 1837).
“You, little devil, are still young/Compete with me weak/It would only be a waste of time/Overtake my brother first,” the passage reads, Translated from Russian.
I see you are a tough negotiator! Ok, you can have 10% more pay per view money,” Musk replies to the tweet.
Which featured a (presumably edited) image of a shirtless Putin riding a bear and a picture of Musk playing with a flamethrower.
“He can even bring his bear,” Musk said in yet another Monday tweet.
Musk clearly knows about all the tweaking and trolling which is going on. It’s not the first time it’s happened. He has sparred Rogozin in his fashion before.
Let’s look at an incident. Back in April 2014, Rogozin made an inappropriate remark when he was Russia’s deputy prime minister. He remarked that the United States should use trampoline to get their astronauts to the international space station.
He made this statement due to being upset that the United States has imposed economic sanctions in the wake of Russia’s 2014 invasion and subsequent annexation of Crimea, which had been a part of Ukraine.
These sanctions were partly targeted by the Russian space industry and partly individuals, including Rogozin himself. His remark alluded to the reality that the United States was fully reliant on Russian Soyuz vehicles for crewed journeys to and from orbit at that time.
This reliance, which began in July 2011 when NASA retired its space shuttle fleet, ended in May 2020, when SpaceX deployed two NASA astronauts to the space station on a Demo-2 test mission. Musk had a retort for Rogozin not long after the successful launch: “The trampoline is working!”
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