Musk has secretly contacted Putin since 2022, says bombshell new report

By Csongor Körömi | 10/25/2024 12:14 PM EDT

The Russian president even asked the billionaire for a Starlink favor.

A protester holds a sign supporting Elon Musk during an antiwar rally in Washington.

A protester holds a sign supporting Elon Musk during an antiwar rally in Washington to mark the one-year anniversary of the war in Ukraine on Feb. 19, 2023. Demonstrators called for cutting support for Ukraine's military. Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images

Tech billionaire Elon Musk has been in regular contact with Russian President Vladimir Putin since late 2022, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal.

According to the Journal’s intelligence sources, Musk and Putin continued to have talks into this year, even as Musk began to ramp up his criticism of U.S. military support for Ukraine and became actively involved in the election campaign of Republican candidate and former President Donald Trump.

Putin once asked the entrepreneur to avoid activating his Starlink satellite internet service over Taiwan as a favor to Chinese President Xi Jinping, two people briefed on the request said.

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The bombshell claims land at a critical time in the U.S. election campaign, but the businessman’s influence extends far beyond politics, via his social network platform X and his tech company SpaceX, through which he has megabucks government contracts and high-level security clearance to classified U.S. information.

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