Elon Musk has waded into the growing 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.
Musk, 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”.
Digging in 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.”
He questioned the results of a poll of support taken earlier this month, claiming it was controlled by Zelensky, but without providing any evidence, and merely citing a questionable 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.
Ukraine, having been at war since Russia invaded, obviously cannot hold free and fair elections. It would be hindered, first of all, by the high risk of Russia attacking Ukrainian cities which continue near-nightly, as well as 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 an election cannot be held during wartime.
It’s naive to assume Trump has betrayed Ukraine
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Read MoreZelensky 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 real 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.
Fears that the rift between Ukraine and the US was widening increased further yesterday with the cancellation of a joint press conference between Zelensky and Trump’s special envoy.
The scheduled comments to the media was scheduled to follow talks between the Ukrainian President and retired US lieutenant general Keith Kellogg, special envoy to Ukraine and Russia, but was cancelled at the request of US officials, the Ukrainian president’s spokesman Serhii Nikiforovsaid.
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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