Elon Musk earned scorn from both a Ukrainian ambassador and the Ukrainian president himself this week after the Tesla CEO tweeted what he thinks needs to be done to broker peace between Russia and Ukraine. The ambassador put it quite bluntly: “f— off.”
On Monday afternoon, Musk put up a poll on Twitter, asking his followers to vote “yes” or “no” on whether his advice would lead to peace. The Tesla CEO listed four bullet points in his post, which largely implied that Ukraine should make concessions.
“Ukraine-Russia Peace: Redo elections of annexed regions under UN supervision. Russia leaves if that is will of the people,” Musk wrote. “Crimea formally part of Russia, as it has been since 1783 (until Khrushchev’s mistake). Water supply to Crimea assured. Ukraine remains neutral.”
In response, Andrij Melnyk, Ukraine’s ambassador to Germany, wrote back a “very diplomatic” response: “F— off.”
In a follow-up tweet to his original post, Musk wrote that everything he wrote is “highly likely to be the outcome in the end – just a question of how many die before then.” And once again, Melnyk had a response.
“The only outcome ist [sic] that now no Ukrainian will EVER buy your f…ing tesla crap,” he wrote. “So good luck to you.”
Even Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy tweeted out an angry response. Mocking Musk’s choice to create a poll, Zelenskyy created his own poll, asking “Which @elonmusk do you like more?” The options were “one who supports Ukraine” and “One who supports Russia.”
As of this printing, the United Nations reports that 5,767 Ukrainians have been killed and 8,292 injured in the Ukraine-Russia war.