On Monday, the Ukrainian parliament and its speaker taunted Elon Musk, the billionaire tycoon, after he published a meme on his social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, which mocked President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s appeals for wartime aid from the Western countries.
Musk-owned SpaceX, which supplies Starlink satellite communication services that are essential for Ukraine’s defense measures, but his statements have sometimes outraged Ukraine since the full-scale attack launched by Russia in February 2022.
Musk posted earlier on Monday a mocking meme on his platform X, showing Zelenskyy with the caption: “When it’s been 5 minutes and you haven’t asked for a billion dollars in aid.”
The Ukraine’s leader and his top lieutenants have pleaded to their partners throughout the battle to secure billions of dollars of military assistance to weather and push back Russia’s raid.
Ruslan Stefanchuk, the speaker of Ukraine’s parliament, responded to Musk’s post with his post on X.
With an apparent reference to SpaceX’s failed April rocket launch, Stefanchuk posted, “The case when … (Elon Musk) tried to conquer space, but something went wrong and in 5 minutes he was up to his eyeballs in shit.”
On its official page on X, Ukraine’s parliament accused Musk of spreading Russian propaganda, posting its version of the meme with a picture of Musk and the caption: “When it’s been 5 minutes and you haven’t spread Russian propaganda.”
While Mykhailo Podolyak, a Ukrainian presidential adviser, said, “Unfortunately, not everyone and not always, while being significant media figures, but being thousands of kilometers away from the war’s epicenter, is able to realize what the daily bombardments and cries of children losing their parents are.”
