Elon Musk has been slammed by Ukrainian officials for "playing god" and posting a "stupid joke" online after he shared a photoshopped image mocking Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s requests for Western military aid.
“Any silence or irony towards Ukraine today is a direct encouragement of Russian propaganda that justifies mass violence and destruction,” Zelensky aide Mikhail Podolyak posted on X in an apparent allusion to Musk. “Unfortunately, not everyone and not always, being significant media figures thousands of kilometers away from the epicenter of the war, is able to realize what the daily bombardments and the cries of children losing their parents are.”
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Musk provoked that indirect rebuke by inserting Zelensky’s face into the “frustrated boy” meme, an image of a high schooler with bulging veins, originally captioned as “trying to hold a fart next to a cute girl in class.” The explanation in Musk’s version is “when it’s been 5 min and you haven’t asked for a billion dollars in aid” — a taunt that leaves Ukrainian officials with suppressed frustration due to their reliance on a man whom they seem to regard as a foolish patron.
"He's heavily criticized, but more on a private level,” senior Ukrainian lawmaker Oleksandr Merezhko, who chairs the foreign affairs committee in the Ukrainian Parliament, told the Washington Examiner. “To me it was just, to tell you the truth, a sign of bad taste, not to say stupidity. It was just a stupid joke.”
The post touched off a storm of outraged replies. “Funny how rich people - convinced they’re bulls***-immune - walk right into putin’s bulls*** trap. Like Elon did,” Ukrainian Ambassador Olexander Scherba, who came out of retirement during the war to lead the Ukrainian foreign ministry’s strategic communications, posted on X. “Humble people are harder to manipulate than those playing god.”
The replies to Musk’s offending post have become a microcosm for the international debate about the continuation of Western aid to Ukraine.
“It takes a compromise to end the war now. ... And it takes sacrificing Ukrainian freedom, land and people to achieve compromise at this stage. It’s like making compromise with Hitler in 1944. 'You can keep Poland & Belgium. Plus close at least half of concentration camps,'” Scherba added in a message to another Musk respondent. “It’s Ukraine’s decision and Ukraine’s suffering. And Ukraine is ready to fight rather than leaving thousands back in putin’s slavery. And you want to force them into slavery, impose a yoke on them that you personally would never accept.”
Merezhko was quick to recall, however, that Musk provided the Starlink equipment that Ukrainian forces have relied upon for satellite internet throughout the war.
“I wouldn't exaggerate this situation, because first of all, Elon Musk — we should acknowledge what he did before,” he said. "He helped us a lot by providing [us] with Starlinks in [a] critical period. So we shouldn't forget about this, even despite his current kind of very controversial, to say the least, remarks.”
Musk also declined to activate that equipment for a Ukrainian attack on Russian forces in Crimea, according to Walter Isaacson’s new biography of the tech mogul, following a reported warning from Russian officials that such attacks could provoke nuclear war. (Ukraine has conducted several strikes in Crimea since that incident.) And Merezhko suggested that “the most wise reaction” to Musk’s taunts would be to give him a tour of liberated Ukrainian territory.
“What I would do, I would invite him to Ukraine,” the foreign affairs chairman said. “People who come here — for them, Ukraine stops being something abstract, something just on the TV news. They realize that it's life, for many people, life and death for many people. And they come back changed.”
Asked to clarify whether he plans to invite Musk, he said yes. “I can invite him personally and I would gladly host him and show him around, because it's important,” Merezhko said. “Through your newspaper, I'm inviting him to come to Ukraine, personally, yes.”
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The lawmaker acknowledged that he’s not sure if Musk would be willing to accept an invitation. But, in the meantime, he suggested that Ukrainian officials should do Musk the courtesy of ignoring his indelicacies.
“If someone is doing something stupid, the best policy is not to pay too much attention to this, just to shrug shoulders not to pay much attention,” Merezhko said. “And, besides, I think that we still need Elon Musk.”