Elon Musk Just Can’t Help but Pick Petty Fights With World Leaders

On top of running Tesla, SpaceX, and the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, Elon Musk seems to have designs on another side gig: geopolitical consulting. He spent the last several days denouncing Germany’s handling of migrants; describing Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau as a speech-muzzling tyrant; and patrolling the US-Mexico border while armed with a seemingly backward cowboy hat, using the trip to float his own plan to stop undocumented immigration.

His politicking spree carried into Sunday night, with Musk mocking Ukraine’s persistent requests for US funding and military aid. “When it’s been 5 minutes and you haven’t asked for a billion dollars in aid,” read a meme shared by Musk on Sunday, which featured an altered picture of Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy making a strained expression.

In response, Ruslan Stefanchuk, the chairman of Ukraine’s parliament, rejiggered the meme’s wording to jab at the failed test flight of SpaceX’s Starship rocket in April. “The case when a dude tried to conquer space, but something went wrong and in 5 minutes he was up to his eyeballs in shit,” wrote Stefanchuk on X, otherwise known as Twitter.

Ukrainska Pravda, a media outlet in the war-torn country, accused Musk of spreading “Russian propaganda.” Mykhailo Podolyak, a Zelenskyy adviser, seemed to suggest that Musk can make jokes because he is “thousands of kilometers away from the epicenter of the war” and is not inundated with the sounds of “daily bombardments and the cries of children losing their parents.” Grant Shapps, the UK’s secretary of defense, likewise called Musk’s anti-Zelenskyy meme “unhelpful.”

“He can tweet or X what he likes. What Ukraine really needs is strong and steady friends who won’t waver,” Shapps added.

For some time, Musk was among those strong and steady friends: He donated thousands of SpaceX Starlink terminals to the country last year and covered service costs for the Ukrainian military. But he later soured on the pro bono arrangement—SpaceX has since secured a Pentagon contract to fund the usage of Starlink in Ukraine—and began questioning Western support for the country. In October of last year, Musk shared a peace proposal that aligned with many of Russia’s strategic goals, suggesting official Russian control of Crimea and potentially other annexed territories. And last fall, Musk reportedly sabotaged a planned Ukrainian attack that would have required the use of Starlink to pilot a fleet of submersible kamikaze drones.

As for Musk’s other geopolitical escapades, he received pushback from the German Foreign Office on Friday after he questioned why German NGO ships were rescuing migrants attempting to cross the Mediterranean from North Africa, with the intention of bringing them to Italy. “It’s called saving lives,” the country’s foreign office wrote in a post to Musk. He replied by saying the rescue operation was giving off “invasion vibes.”