Elon Musk has waded into the row between Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelensky with an extraordinary barrage of abuse aimed at the Ukrainian President hours after a joint US-Ukraine press conference in Kyiv was suddenly cancelled.
The Tesla billionaire and close Trump adviser railed against Zelensky in a rant on his social media platform X, describing him as a “disgusting, massive graft machine feeding off the dead bodies of Ukrainian soldiers”.
Doubling down on false claims made by Trump on Wednesday that Zelensky was a “dictator” with a 4 per cent approval rating, Musk said Zelensky was “despised by the people of Ukraine, which is why he has refused to hold an election”.
He continued: “If Zelensky was actually loved by the people of Ukraine, he would hold an election. He knows he would lose in a landslide, despite having seized control of ALL Ukrainian media, so he cancelled the election.”
There is no evidence for his claim. Ukraine’s government points out that an election cannot be legally held while the country is under martial law, because of the war.
If one could be held it would be disrupted by the high risk of Russia attacking Ukrainian cities, and by the fact that many citizens have fled abroad, many are fighting, and millions are living under Russian occupation.
There is little domestic appetite for an election, with most opposition parties in agreement that it cannot be held during wartime.
Musk also questioned the results of a poll taken earlier this month that showed there was significant support for Zelensky, claiming it was controlled by the President. Musk did not provide any evidence, only citing a right-wing news outlet.
The poll, conducted by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology, found that Zelensky’s approval rating stood at 57 per cent, up from 52 per cent in December.
Zelensky has said he will hold a new election as soon as the war ends, suggesting this could happen before the end of the year.
Musk’s outburst comes at a time of escalating crisis in relations between Trump and Zelensky, which culminated in the US President branding him a “dictator” on Wednesday and falsely claiming that Ukraine started the war with Russia.
There are fears that Trump could cut off American support for Ukraine’s war effort and force it into a deal that grants Russian President Vladimir Putin all of his demands, which would be likely to undermine Ukraine’s territory and sovereignty.
Concerns that the rift was widening increased further yesterday with the cancellation of a joint press conference between Zelensky and Trump’s special envoy.
It had been scheduled to follow talks between the Ukrainian President and retired US lieutenant general Keith Kellogg, special envoy to Ukraine and Russia.
However, it was cancelled at the request of US officials, the Ukrainian President’s spokesman Serhii Nikiforov said.
Nikiforov gave no other reason other than that the cancellation was in accordance with US wishes. The US delegation made no immediate comment.
Before the meeting, photographers and video journalists were allowed into a room where the two men shook hands before sitting across from each other at a table at the presidential office in Kyiv.
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