Elon Musk Slammed by Ukraine: ‘Catastrophic Mistake’

Ukraine has lashed out at Elon Musk over comments he made suggesting the U.S. re-calibrate relations with Russia to avoid World War III.

Musk made the comments on Monday during a live discussion on his social media platform X, formerly Twitter, where he said avoiding another global war was the “most important issue,” and denied there was any “anti-Russian insurgency” in Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine. He argued that the people in occupied territories such as Crimea actually “want to be part of Russia” and those areas should be officially ceded to Moscow.

The discussion, titled “Where is the Israel-Hamas war headed? Could this lead to WW3?,” saw Musk discuss the implications of another potential world war that he said would be a “civilizational risk that we may not recover from.”

Some of his suggestions focused on the war between Ukraine and Russia but have subsequently been rebuked by Mykhailo Podolyak, advisor to the head of the Ukrainian president’s office.

“Musk believes that the ‘surrender of Ukraine’ to the knife of the mandatory large-scale Russian genocide will lead us to the end of the war and ‘eternal peace,'” Podolyak wrote in a lengthy statement on messaging app, Telegram.

He described Musk’s suggestions as a “catastrophic mistake,” which would not end the war, but rather “lead to a sharp increase in conflicts around the world, the end of the era of international law, the collapse of the international economy and the triumph of the forces of evil.”

“There will be no more rules. Predictability and contractual capacity will be gone eventually. The appetites of the aggressors will grow, terrorist groups will receive more and more investments within the axis of evil,” Podolyak continued.

“All this will end with a great war on different continents, in which, probably, in this case, the citizens of America will have to participate,” he wrote.

Newsweek contacted Musk via the X press team for comment.

Musk also spoke about how he believed U.S. policy and any moves by NATO to make Ukraine a member were pushing Russia to form a stronger alliance with China and Iran, and that such an alliance could easily defeat Western forces in a war.

Other speakers in the live discussion included Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, who agreed with Musk by saying: “If we do enter World War III, the United States as we know it will cease to exist.”

Musk’s SpaceX has deployed its Starlink satellites to help provide Kyiv with internet service. He has previously said the Starlink satellites give Ukraine a “major battlefield advantage.”

However, SpaceX refuses to allow the satellites to be used to help launch an attack on Crimea or be used to control drones in the region, which Musk says would involve the company in a “major act of war,” adding that the service was never meant to be weaponized.