Elon Musk’s father fawned over Russian President Vladimir Putin while attending a forum in Moscow hosted by a Russian ultranationalist organization.
Errol Musk, 79, praised Putin as a “very stable and pleasant man,” and gushed about the dictator’s supposed leadership qualities, The Times reported. He was pictured with Russian oligarch Konstantin Malofeyev, whom the U.S. has hit with sanctions for supporting Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Musk continued by lashing out at the “fake media” in the West, accusing it of spreading “complete nonsense” about Russia in an effort to frame the nation as an “enemy.”
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His glowing remarks about Putin echo those made by President Donald Trump—his son’s ex-buddy—who famously called the Russian president “genius” and “savvy” for ordering the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
Musk also weighed in on the public rift between Elon and Trump, blaming it on “five months of intense stress” and their clashing egos, Reuters reported.
“With all the opposition cleared and two people left in the arena, all they have ever done is get rid of everything and now they are trying to get rid of each other—well that has to stop,” Musk said.
When asked how it would end, he said: “Oh, it will end on a good note, very soon.”
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, who has repeatedly brandished the threat of nuclear weapons to deter U.S. and European support for Ukraine, was seated beside Errol Musk at the forum. Lavrov cast the war with Ukraine as “a battle between good and evil” in which Russia would triumph, The Times said.
It’s not the first time Musk has swooned about Putin—who continues to ignore American and European calls for ceasefire talks in a war has left an estimated 1.4 million Ukrainian and Russian soldiers dead or wounded.
“It would be foolish not to admire Putin,” Errol Musk told BBC Russia in April, mentioning that his son shares his rosy view of the Russian president. “I listen to his speeches—he says logical things. If you view him simply as a man, not in the context of international politics, it’s hard not to have respect for Mr. Putin.”
Elon Musk was in regular, secret contact with Putin following the outbreak of the war, according to The Wall Street Journal, with their conversations said to have touched on personal matters, geopolitics, and business.
The Tesla CEO has emerged as one of the loudest critics of U.S. support for Ukraine, accusing Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky of avoiding peace efforts and “feeding off the dead bodies of Ukrainian soldiers.”
