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The revelation from the Wall Street Journal that Elon Musk has been in regular direct contact with President Vladimir Putin for the last two years during Russia‘s disastrous and costly invasion of Ukraine is the final confirmation that the world’s richest man and owner of X is leading a second Russian front – in information warfare.
The ideological alliance has been apparent for some time. Though initially expressing support for the Ukrainian people as they faced invasion by Russia in the spring of 2022, Musk has since used his social media platform to mock Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, argue against any further US military support for Ukraine, and suggest a ‘peace plan’ which largely accords with Putin’s demands.
Musk’s personal opinions in favour of Putin’s war aims are expressed quite openly. Just as overt is his unbanning of pro-Russian influencers like Tommy Robinson and Andrew Tate, and his regular boosting of disinformation about the war – especially from Tenet Media, which was revealed in an FBI indictment in September to be funded by the Russian state broadcaster, RT, to the tune of $10m through a British based shell company.
More covert is the way Musk has warped the algorithms and moderation of his social media platform – which he boasts is the major global source of news – in favour of Russia’s propaganda war.
In late 2022, Ukraine’s country code was deleted from Twitter’s database so that Ukrainians with 2-factor authentication could not access their accounts.
In 2023, it was revealed that X’s algorithm had been deliberately engineered to downrate posts about Ukraine and that the ‘spaces’ function of X (where users can host talks) had flagged the subject ‘Ukraine Crisis’ as a safety violation, “leading to reduced visibility of the labelled entity”.
By the end of 2024, there was widespread analytic evidence that many prominent pro-Ukrainian accounts had been successfully muffled. X still regularly blocks access to news sites depicting civilian casualties and suspends accounts which detail Russian war crimes.
Blood Money
There are also hidden financial interests. The full list of investors in X, which Musk purchased for $44bn in 2022 was revealed in unsealed court filings in August.
They included the venture capital firm 8VC which employs the children of Russian oligarchs Petr Aven and Vadim Moshkovich, both of whom are under sanctions for their ties to Russia and involvement in its war with Ukraine.
As well as his contact with Putin, a source told the Wall Street Journal that Musk was in regular conversations with other “high-level Russians,” including Sergei Kiriyenko, Putin’s first deputy chief of staff.
Kiryenko was named in an FBI warrant as the Russian Government official supervising various Russian social media firms in developing the Doppelganger network of pro-Russian bots and fake news sites which Byline Times first revealed in February.
However, Musk’s assistance to the Kremlin’s war efforts is not merely in the field of psych-ops or propaganda: his technology has been a crucial factor in the conflict itself. Putin is said to have requested Musk not to activate his Starlink satellite internet service in Taiwan.
Six months into the war Musk intervened to block the Ukrainian military using Starlink to guide sea drones to attack a Russian naval base in Crimea – the occupied peninsula which was the target of the first phase of Putin’s war against Ukraine in 2014.
The recent higher efficiency of Russian drones – which are daily killing civilians in the major port city of Kherson – is credited to their access to Starlink which was described by the Ukrainian military as “systemic” by February 2024.