The contacts are causing concern among some members of the current US presidential administration.
American billionaire Elon Musk has been in regular contact with Russian President Vladimir Putin since late 2022. In their conversations, they discuss personal topics, business, and geopolitical tensions.
The Wall Street Journal writes about this, citing its own sources.
According to the publication, Musk and Putin's conversations are worrying the current US administration.
“Musk has established deep business ties with the US military and intelligence services through his company SpaceX, so the billionaire most likely has access to certain classified US information,” the journalists write.
Information about Musk's Kremlin contacts appears to be carefully hidden in the US government: several White House officials said they did not know about them. According to WSJ sources, the US government has a big dilemma, because the States are very dependent on the billionaire's space developments, and they don't like it.
In October 2022, Musk publicly stated that he had only spoken to Putin once. He said it was a conversation about space around April 2021. However, after 2022, Musk spoke with several Russian officials, including, according to two WSJ sources, First Deputy Head of the Presidential Administration Sergei Kiriyenko. What they talked about is unknown.
In the fall of 2022, political scientist Ian Bremmer said that Musk told him about his conversation with Putin and the Kremlin's “red lines.” According to Bremmer, Musk conveyed to him the message that “Russia will preserve Crimea and Ukraine's neutrality at any cost and that it will respond to a Ukrainian invasion of Crimea with a nuclear strike.” Musk denied telling Bremmer this.
In addition, according to the publication, at the end of 2023, Putin asked Musk not to activate Starlink satellite communications terminals in Taiwan in order to do a favor to Chinese leader Xi Jinping.
Recall that before the vote on aid to Ukraine in the US Senate, billionaire Elon Musk called on Americans to influence senators so that they would fail the relevant bill.
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