Russian President Vladimir Putin has held several discussions with Elon Musk over the past two years, during which he also requested a favour from the tech billionaire on behalf of Chinese leader Xi Jinping, according to a new Wall Street Journal report published on Thursday.
Several current and former US, European and Russian officials cited by the Journal said the regular contact between the Russian leader and the tech billionaire started in late 2022 and covered “personal topics, business and geopolitical tensions.”
As part of their talks, Putin also asked Musk to not activate the Starlink service over Taiwan to appease Xi, a former Russian intelligence officer with knowledge of the request told the Journal. Russia has become close and increasingly dependent on China for trade and navigating sanctions placed on the country over its invasion of Ukraine. An official from the Chinese embassy in Washington told the outlet they had no comment on the topic.
Musk has so far not commented on the contents of the Journal’s report.
Putin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov dismissed the alleged close contact between Putin and Musk, saying there’s been only one phone call between the two men in which they discussed space, among other technologies, the Journal reported.
Musk’s reported discussions with Putin, a major US adversary, raise potential national security concerns for the US government as his company SpaceX is involved in several U.S. intelligence and military projects.
Musk has also taken an elevated role in former President Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign, donating millions to his own Trump super PAC and also headlining events promoting his White House bid.
Meanwhile, a new book authored by journalist Bob Woodward, titled War, alleges Trump and Putin have spoken several times since he left office in January 2021.
Trump declined to confirm Woodward’s reporting, telling Bloomberg’s editor-in-chief John Micklethwait, “If I did, it’s a smart thing.”
Putin on Thursday also dismissed the book’s reporting as “nonsense.”
“But when Trump says that he wants to put an end to the war in Ukraine, I think that he is sincere,” he said at the BRICS conference.
Trump has claimed resolving the nearly three-year conflict would be one of his first orders of business as president-elect but has not offered details on how that would be achieved.
His stance on the war has also alarmed Democratic lawmakers and US allies who worry about the future of US aid to Kyiv in the event that Trump secures reelection next month.
Read the full report at The Wall Street Journal.