Musk's Ties To Putin Laid Bare
Musk's Ties To Putin Laid Bare
We should be very worried.
A lawsuit filed by disgruntled ex-Twitter employees accusing Musk of violating their arbitration agreements has revealed something extremely disturbing about Musk’s takeover of the now-dying platform. It turns out that some of the financing Musk acquired by Musk to see through his purchase of Twitter was linked to Russian Oligarchs in Putin’s inner circle. While this connection is not as direct as many are reporting, it, combined with Musk’s change of behaviour since taking over Twitter, nonetheless heavily suggests that Musk is under the influence of the Kremlin. Let me explain.
One of the court documents of this lawsuit detailed who financed Musk’s purchase of Twitter, and it makes for some worrying reading. For example, Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz’s venture capital firm, Andreessen Horowitz, was a major backer of Musk’s purchase. Interestingly enough, they are both hard-line Trump supporters, and since Musk purchased Twitter, he has swung dramatically to the right and has backed Trump. This could easily be a coincidence, but the timings are nonetheless suspicious.
There are other questionable backers, such as P. Diddy. But there is one that seems innocent on the surface: the US venture capital firm 8VC, but beneath the surface, it really isn’t.
You see, Jack Moshkovich and Denis Aven are both integral parts of 8VC’s investment team, and both are children of Russian oligarchs Vadim Moshkovich and Petr Aven. Vadim Moshkovich is a relatively low-ranking oligarch who made billions through agriculture and has major interests in Russia’s agricultural sector. Petr Aven, on the other hand, headed up Russia’s largest investment bank, and is a part of Putin’s inner circle. In fact, Aven has even been a part of Putin’s ongoing meetings over Ukraine. Both Vadim Moshkovich and Petr Aven were sanctioned by the West in response to the Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine.
Now, just because their sons were a part of Musk’s purchase of Twitter does not mean that either Putin, Petr or Vadim have any control over the finance or Musk. We don’t know the details of how integral Jack or Denis are to the deal, how much control they have over it, or how close they are to their fathers and their father’s dedication to Putin. So let me be crystal clear here, there is no concrete evidence yet that Musk is influenced by Putin through this finance deal with 8VC.
However, there is a deeply disturbing change in Musk’s behaviour since his purchase of Twitter, which heavily implies that he is influenced by this connection to Putin.
Firstly, back in 2022, while Musk was pulling together this financing deal, he publicly stated that Russia should be allowed to keep Crimea and that Ukraine should abandon its attempts to join NATO. Needless to say, such public statements were deeply detrimental to the conversion around protecting Western safety against Russian aggression. He doubled down and even suggested that regions Russia had annexed following their 2022 invasion should hold votes as to whether they want to be a part of Russia, despite the fact these areas had been flooded with Russians, and many Ukrainians native to the area had fled or been killed. Before these outbursts, Musk had been deeply critical of Putin and Russia and even sighted their monopoly over spaceflight after the Space Shuttle had been decommissioned as inspiration for SpaceX. So why the change of attitude? Was this to keep the Aven and Moshkovich boys on side?
Then, in 2023, Musk took far more direct action in the Ukraine war. The Ukrainian forces adopted Musk’s Starlink as a major part of their communications once Russia took out the country’s mobile networks. Not only did Starlink enable personal communications, but it also enabled remote operation of drones, a crucial technology at Ukraine’s disposal. Well, Musk ordered Starlink to be turned off during a Ukrainian offensive, rendering it useless. According to the biography of Elon Musk by Walter Isaacson, upon this order by Musk, armed Ukrainian submarine drones preparing to launch an attack “lost connectivity and washed ashore harmlessly”.
Later that same year, Ukrainian forces found evidence that Russian forces had been using Starlink, too, something that should not have been possible. This evidence was so compelling and so damning that Starlink is being investigated over the allegations.
Why would Musk weaken Ukraine and strengthen Russia like this? Again, was this to keep his Twitter financing deal afloat?
This suspicious behaviour has only got worse this year. In February, Musk opposed giving Ukraine aid and claimed Putin was unbeatable. Needless to say, giving Ukraine aid is key to Western security (it also doesn’t cost the US all that much at all), and Putin is by no means unbeatable. A few months later, the EU warned him that X/Twitter had the highest level of Russian propaganda of any major social media platform, and he needed to better moderate the platform, something he has failed to do. Just a few days ago, Musk defended the Russian founder of Telegram, Pavel Durov, who has been arrested for allowing child pornography and criminal drug organisations on his social media platform.
While none of this behaviour can be proven to be driven by the Kremlin influencing Musk and could be explained by Musk’s increasing right-wing radicalism, it is nonetheless suspicious. The fact Musk was happy to be associated with 8VC is, on its own, deeply concerning, and this proves that more investigation is desperately needed into Musk’s relations with foreign investors.
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Sources: The London Economic, Eurotoday, Cyber News, Yahoo, EU Today, Planet Earth & Beyond, The Guardian, The Guardian, NPR, The New Voice Of Ukraine, The Guardian