Musk tweets deluge of Kremlin talking points on Ukraine as he vows changes to X’s Community Notes after Trump-Zelensky spat
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Elon Musk on Thursday echoed false Kremlin claims that Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky is a “dictator” and vowed to change X’s Community Notes feature, after accusing “governments and legacy media” of gaming the crowd-sourced fact-checking feature amid the Trump administration’s ongoing public spat with the Ukrainian leader.
The comments come in response to a post from an anonymous X account, taking issue with recent polling from the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology showing Zelensky with high levels of support, arguing that “U.S. intelligence” suggests the Ukrainian leader only has four percent support, a differential the poster claimed was because the institute was funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the foreign aid agency that Musk has repeatedly claimed without evidence is a “criminal organization.”
The sociology institute has in fact received past support from USAID, an agency Musk’s company Starlink also once collaborated with in Ukraine.
“Working to fix this …It should be utterly obvious that a Zelensky-controlled poll about his OWN approval is not credible!!” Musk wrote in response. “If Zelensky was actually loved by the people of Ukraine, he would hold an election. He knows he would lose in a landslide, despite having seized control of ALL Ukrainian media, so he canceled the election.”
“In reality, he is despised by the people of Ukraine, which is why he has refused to hold an election,” Musk claimed, without providing evidence. “I challenge Zelensky to hold an election and refute this. He will not.”
These statements, as well as the original post they are based on, appear to be inaccurate and lacking context, and Ukraine experts argued such claims are playing into Russia’s heavily distorted narrative of its invasion of the country. They also represent the growing distance between Ukraine and the U.S., which has begun negotiating over the war with Russia without Ukraine, including a high-level meeting this week in Saudi Arabia.
Donald Trump did claim this week that Zelensky is at four percent support, though he did not provide any basis for that claim.
“Well, we have a situation where we haven’t had elections in Ukraine; where we have martial law, essentially martial law, in Ukraine; where the leader in Ukraine, I mean, I hate to say it, but he’s down at 4% percent approval rating,” Trump told reporters, the same day he claimed Zelensky was a “dictator.”
Trump has also claimed in recent days Zelensky “started” the war with Russia, even though it was Russia that invaded Ukraine in 2022, after years of backing armed separatists seizing territory across the east of the country.
Experts, including those at the sociology institute, have found that Zelensky has greater than majority support, with a recent survey finding that 57 percent of Ukrainians trusted the president.
Keith Darden, an American University professor who studies Ukraine, told CNN the private institute is considered “the best and most reliable survey organization in Ukraine,” and its findings are quoted in U.S. and Ukrainian media.
Professor Olga Onuch of The University of Manchester, who regularly conducts survey work in Ukraine, including alongside the sociology institute, has said Trump and Musk’s claims do not reflect the leader’s current support in Ukraine.
“Trump’s claim is not only factually incorrect, but also irresponsible and anti-democratic – Zelensky remains a fairly popular political leader in Ukraine,” she said in an interview with the university’s website. “Spreading misinformation about his legitimacy directly aids Kremlin propaganda and undermines the Ukrainian people’s right to determine their own future.”
Zelensky said on Wednesday that claims he’s a dictator are “coming from Russia.”
“If anyone wants to replace me right now, then it just isn’t going to happen,” he said at a news conference. “I wish Trump’s team had more truth. Because none of this is having a positive effect on Ukraine.”
Indeed, Russian leaders have praised the White House, with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov saying that Trump “understands our position.”
“’A Dictator without Elections, Zelenskyy better move fast or he is not going to have a Country left.’ If you’d told me just three months ago that these were the words of the US president, I would have laughed out loud,” former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev wrote on X. “@realDonaldTrump is 200 percent right. Bankrupt clown…”
Ukrainian and international leaders expressed their support for Zelensky after the claims from Trump and Musk, and argued the White House is playing into Putin’s hands.
“We may like Zelensky, or we may not. We may scold him, or we may praise him. We may condemn his actions, or we may applaud them. Because he is OUR president, as he is,” Borys Filatov, mayor of the city of Dnipro, wrote on Facebook. “It makes no difference whether he is bad or not. And no lying creature, neither in Moscow, nor in Washington, nor anywhere, has the right to open his mouth against him.”
Former Lithuanian foreign minister Gabrielius Landsbergis told The Washington Post the White House’s stance sounds like a “handout” prepared by Lavrov.
Following Trump’s comments, UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer affirmed his position that Zelensky is the country’s “democratically elected leader,” and argued it is “perfectly reasonable to suspend elections during wartime as the U.K. did during World War II.” Britain did not hold elections between 1935 and 1945 because of the Second World War.
Ukraine declared martial law in 2022 when Russia invaded, and the country’s laws prevent it from holding elections when in this emergency status.
There’s little chance the country could hold a free and representative election in its current state, given that Russia occupies nearly a fifth of the country, millions of Ukrainians have fled the nation, and tens of thousands of citizens are deployed to the frontlines.
International observers noted it is Russia that is the true dictatorship, not Ukraine.
“We have a fairly straightforward and clear position on this: President Zelensky was legitimately elected in free, fair and democratic elections,” EU spokesman Stefan de Keersmaecker told reporters this week.
“Ukraine is a democracy, Putin’s Russia is not.”
Vladimir Putin has ruled Russia for the past quarter-century, and has engineered changes to the constitution to remain in power until at least 2036. His political opponents are routinely jailed or even killed, such as Alexei Navalny and Boris Nemtsov.
Others took issue with Musk’s intention to change Community Notes, a popular fact-checking feature.
“The entire point of the community notes system is that it’s independent of the personal views of the people running this platform,” Shayan Sardarizadeh, from the BBC’s Verify team, wrote on X. “If you start tampering with the system because you personally dislike some notes, then how could users continue to trust it?”
The Independent has contacted X for comment.
Musk, who has long framed himself as a champion of online free speech, has touted Community Notes as an effective tool to maintain factual discourse on X without resorting to top-down speech guidelines.
“Community Notes aims to help all people better understand issues discussed in posts, including people who may hold different viewpoints,” the company’s website reads. “Contribute in a way that even those who may disagree with you might find helpful and respectful. Avoid hateful, derogatory, or inflammatory language.”
As The Independent has reported, in practice, Musk’s commitment to free speech and fact-based discussion only goes so far.
The billionaire has called for a boycott of Wikipedia in protest at a change to his page regarding his alleged Nazi salute at the Trump inauguration, and he frequently traffics in inaccurate, unsourced, or fully untrue claims on his own X account. This week he said that journalists working on CBS News’s 60 Minutes “deserve a long prison sentence” because of edits to an interview with Kamala Harris that industry insiders say were routine.
“He is the world’s leading free speech hypocrite,” Seth Stern, director of advocacy at the Freedom of the Press Foundation, recently told The Independent. “And his actions with respect to Wikipedia are further evidence of that.
