MOSCOW: The Kremlin on Friday denied a report by The Wall Street Journal that Russian President Vladimir Putin and billionaire SpaceX founder Elon Musk had been in regular secret contact since 2022.
“It’s all untrue, absolutely false information published in the newspaper,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told journalists.
The WSJ report claimed Putin had discussed personal and political matters with the world’s richest man, who has supported Donald Trump’s election campaign with donations and messages on his X platform.
The report alleges Putin asked Musk to avoid activating his Starlink satellite internet service over Taiwan as a favour to Chinese leader Xi Jinping.
Peskov said that Putin “had one contact with Musk before 2022”, when “they spoke on the phone”.
“It was a fact-finding conversation. They talked about more visionary technology, about technology for the future,” he said.
“It was a medium-length phone call. That was the only contact”.
“After that there were no contacts between Putin and Musk. All claims of this are false,” he added.
Peskov said the US report was “most likely yet another fake story during a US election campaign that is heated to the limit.” “The race is close to the finishing line – opponents will stoop to any means,” he said.
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“A week ago, they were saying Putin chats to Trump all day, now he allegedly speaks to Musk,” Peskov said, referring to a book by a US journalist published this month.
Written by Bob Woodward, the book, “War” claimed Trump secretly sent Covid test kits to Putin and spoke multiple times with the Russian leader after leaving office.
Peskov confirmed that Trump sent Putin Covid tests but denied any calls between them after Trump left office.
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