Elon Musk has ended up in a Twitter spat with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy after he proposed his solution to solve the Russian invasion.
The tech mogul, known for Tesla cars and private space company SpaceX, tweeted how to achieve “Ukraine-Russia peace” on Monday night.
Musk suggested: “Redo the elections of the annexed regions under UN supervision. Russia will leave if this is the will of the people.”
Moscow held four fake referendums in late September in areas of Ukraine it claims to have “liberated” – Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia – and claims the regions voted to join Russia. This was a violation of international law.
The international community already rejected the results before they were announced, believing that people were forced to vote – if they were able to vote at all.
Ukraine managed to recapture some of these areas through its latest string of successes just days after Vladimir Putin declared them to be Russian territory.
But Musk, co-founder of PayPal, continued with his proposal: “Crimea is formally part of Russia, as it has been since 1783 (until Khrushchev’s mistake).
“Crimea’s water supply is guaranteed”.
The Crimean peninsula was annexed by Russia in 2014 and Kiev has vowed to return it. It has been part of Ukraine since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991.
Musk also suggested: “Ukraine remains neutral.”
This is arguably the most controversial part of his plan, as Ukraine has just applied to join NATO’s defense alliance, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, in an effort to defend itself against aggression and nuclear threats. of Russia.
Russia also invaded Ukraine in an unprovoked act of aggression in February under the guise of a “special military operation” and the baseless claim that neo-Nazis were running the country.
Musk introduced this plan as a poll on Twitter. More than two million people voted in less than 24 hours – and with seven hours to go, 60.2% said they did not support it.
But Musk was quite determined to stick to his proposals. In response, he tweeted: “This will most likely be the result in the end – just a question of how many people die before then.
“It is also worth noting that a possible, albeit unlikely, outcome of this conflict is nuclear war.”
Musk’s tweet follows Ukraine’s successful counter-offensives in recent weeks. Meanwhile, accusations that Russia is committing war crimes against Ukraine through its aggressive shelling continue to grow.
Clearly seeing that idea was not forthcoming, Musk wrote on Twitter: “Let’s try this then: the will of the people living in Donbas and Crimea should decide whether they are part of Russia or Ukraine.”
The majority (58.1%) supported this proposal after 16 hours of voting.
Musk also tweeted saying, “Russia is doing partial mobilization. They go into full war mobilization if Crimea is in danger. Death on both sides will be devastating.”
However, this overlooks the fact that the partial mobilization has caused anti-war protests across the country, an influx of people fleeing Russia, and – due to the lack of training these reservists have had – is not expected to result in any additional victories anytime soon. . .
After the backlash, Musk tweeted that he doesn’t want to be popular, but he does care that “millions of people could die without needing an essentially identical result.”
He also claimed that Russia has more than three times the population of Ukraine, so a Ukrainian victory is unlikely. “If you care about the people of Ukraine, seek peace.”
So how did Ukraine respond?
Well, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelesnkyy quickly responded with his poll.
He asked Twitter users: “Which @elonmusk do you like best?”
The options were “He who supports Ukraine” and “He who supports Russia”.
Almost 80% of the two million voters supported the former option.
Musk has a history of causing a stir on Twitter. Not long ago, he was even proposing to buy the entire social media platform, but a dispute with the executives behind the company over unwanted accounts on the platform caused the $44bn (£36bn) deal to fall through.
