Putin Showers Elon Musk With Praise in Odd Remarks: ‘Not Often… Such People Appear In The Human Population’
Russian President Vladimir Putin showered Elon Musk with praise on Thursday while addressing college students about his country’s policy on space.
According to a Russian state media report picked up by Business Insider, Putin compared the SpaceX CEO to late Soviet rocket scientist and trailblazer Sergei Korolev.
Business Insider reported:
Putin was speaking to university students about space policy when he mentioned Musk’s ambitions and accomplishments in the field. Musk founded his own rocket company, SpaceX, in 2002 with the goal of colonizing Mars.
“You know, there’s a man — he lives in the States — Musk, who, one might say, raves about Mars. It is not often that such people, charged with a certain idea, appear in the human population,” Putin said, per a translation from the state-owned news agency TASS.
Putin went on to compare Musk to the late Soviet rocket pioneer, Sergei Korolev. Korolev, who died in 1966, was the lead rocket engineer and designer for the Soviet Union’s satellites and rockets. He was also responsible for the first human spaceflight when the Soviet Union sent cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin into space in 1961.
Per the TASS report cited by Business Insider, Putin added of Musk, “Just like in their time the ideas of Korolev, our other pioneers, got to materialize. They seemed incredible, some of the plans they made. But they all materialized… A mission to Mars would be very hard. It now seems very difficult to implement… If you take an interest in this, you probably know.”
The Wall Street Journal reported last October that Musk and Putin had an open line of communication.
The contact between the two was described as “regular” at the time.
It was not clear on Thursday if Putin and Musk, who works in the White House for President Donald Trump, were still speaking.
The Journal report last October claimed that in a conversation between Russia’s leader and the world’s richest man, Putin asked Musk for a favor:
At one point, Putin asked the billionaire to avoid activating his Starlink satellite internet service over Taiwan as a favor to Chinese leader Xi Jinping, said two people briefed on the request. Starlink has never secured permission to offer internet service in Taiwan, whose government places restrictions on non-Taiwanese satellite operators.
In 2023, it was reported by the New York Times that Musk had even scuttled a Ukrainian drone attack on Russia’s fleet off its coast. “Elon Musk foiled an attack on Russia’s Black Sea fleet last year by refusing to let Ukraine use his satellite network to guide its drones, Mr. Musk has acknowledged, provoking a furious response from a top official in Kyiv and renewing questions about the global power wielded by a multibillionaire businessman,” reported the Times.
