Ukrainian officials criticize Musk for mocking Zelensky: ‘Don’t you have empathy?’

Elon Musk came under fire Monday for mocking Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s repeated requests for foreign aid as his country seeks to fend off the invasion from Russia.

In a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, Musk posted a meme of Zelensky’s face photoshopped onto an image of a person with their veins popped, accompanied by the text, “When it’s been 5 minutes and you haven’t asked for a billion dollars in aid.”

The post quickly drew criticism from Ukrainian leaders, including Mariana Betsa, the spokesperson for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

“Elon, don’t you have empathy? Ukrainians are killed daily by Russia. We are fighting for our lives, for our families, for our country, for our freedom #StandWithUkraine,” Betsa wrote Monday in a post on X, which Musk owns.

Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Zelensky, said any support of Russia is a “direct investment in war, genocide, destruction of the free world, escalation and the right to impunity,” while indirectly calling out those who do not experience the war firsthand.

“Any silence or irony towards Ukraine today is a direct encouragement of Russian propaganda that justifies mass violence and destruction,” Podolyak wrote in a post on X. “Unfortunately, not everyone and not always, being significant media figures thousands of kilometers away from the epicenter of the war, is able to realize what the daily bombardments and the cries of children losing their parents are.”

Zelensky and Musk’s tensions rose to the surface last year, when the entrepreneur proposed Ukraine cede territory to Russia as a way to end the war. Zelensky fired back at the proposal, suggesting Musk should come to the country to better understand the conflict.

Tensions ramped up last month when Musk confirmed that he cut off the Ukrainian military’s access to the internet through Starlink, blocking an attack on Russian forces.

The United States’s funding for Ukraine took center stage last week as Congress struggled to come to an agreement over increasing aid to the war-torn country. After days of back-and-forth, Ukraine funding was not included in a last-minute “clean” stopgap measure approved by Congress in a dramatic weekend vote that prevented a government shutdown.

More than $6 billion in aid to the war-torn country had been included in a Senate stopgap measure, but Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) in a surprise Saturday move brought legislation to the floor that funded the government but did not include aid to Ukraine.

A number of House Republicans oppose aid to Ukraine, which has been a priority for the White House as well as for Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and other Republicans. The Senate GOP, itself divided over Ukraine, agreed to the McCarthy plan. 

Last week, Musk took a jab at the lawmakers’ infighting in a post on X, writing: “Why do so many American politicians from both parties care 100 times more about the Ukraine border than the USA border?”

The bipartisan stopgap measure did not include border policy changes, provoking the ire of hard-liner House Republicans who have demanded such changes.

McCarthy said Sunday that he is committed to helping Ukraine, but that addressing the crisis at the border is a bigger priority.

Musk took a trip last week to the U.S. southern border in Eagle Pass, Texas, with Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-Texas), where he described the environment as “like a ‘Breaking Bad’ situation.”