On Monday, Ukraine’s parliament and its speaker taunted Elon Musk after he posted a meme on his social media platform making fun of President Volodymyr Zelensky’s calls for Western help in times of war.
Musk is the owner of SpaceX, which offers Starlink satellite communications services. It provides invaluable support to Ukraine’s defence forces, but the billionaire’s statements have occasionally angered the authorities.
The entrepreneur posted a meme on his X platform, formerly known as Twitter, on Monday, which depicts Zelensky and the caption: “When it’s been 5 minutes and you haven’t asked for a billion dollars in aid.”
Throughout the war, the President of Ukraine and his top aides appealed to their allies to provide billions of dollars in military aid to withstand and repel Russian offensives.
In response to Musk’s mockery, Ukrainian parliament speaker Ruslan Stefanchuk published a post on X, referring to SpaceX’s unsuccessful rocket launch in April:
The case when … [Elon Musk] tried to conquer space, but something went wrong and in 5 minutes he was up to his eyeballs in sh*t.
Ukraine’s parliament also accused Musk of spreading Russian propaganda and posted its own version of the meme on X with Musk’s image and the caption: “When it’s been 5 minutes and you haven’t spread Russian propaganda.”
Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak stated in a post on X that silence or irony about Ukraine plays into the hands of Russian propaganda.
Unfortunately, not everyone and not always, while being significant media figures, but being thousands of kilometres away from the war’s epicentre, is able to realise what the daily bombardments and cries of children losing their parents are.
Earlier, Ukrainian officials criticised Musk for his offer to give away some Ukrainian land in exchange for peace.
Zelensky visited the United States in September and met with senior officials to discuss further aid for the military conflict. However, over the weekend, Congress removed the aid package for Ukraine to avert a US government shutdown.
The US has provided tens of billions of dollars in military and financial aid to Kyiv since the outbreak of the war in Ukraine.
