From Vogue shoot amid war to polls: Elon Musk makes Zelenskyy his punching bag

Tech titan Elon Musk has opened another front in the already fraught ties between Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelenskyy, slamming the Ukrainian President over an old Vogue photoshoot while the country was at war with Russia and asserting that he was "despised by his people". Musk's spree of social media attacks against Zelenskyy mirrors the US's changing stance towards Ukraine under the Trump administration.

The barrage of attacks started with Musk sharing a 2022 cover photo of the fashion magazine Vogue featuring Zelenskyy and his wife Olena Zelenska. The photoshoot was done to emphasise the resilience of Ukrainians amid the devastating war with Russia.

"He did this while kids are dying in trenches on the war front," Musk tweeted. The issue blew out of proportion in 2022, with Zelenskyy coming under heavy criticism from certain quarters and Republicans for the timing and nature of the photoshoot.

'UKRAINIANS DESPISE ZELENSKYY'

The second salvo came hours later, with Musk daring Zelenskyy to face elections while underscoring that the Ukrainians "despised" their President. In a flurry of posts on X, Musk accused Zelenskyy of running a "massive graft machine feeding off the dead bodies of Ukrainian soldiers".

While the exact figure is not known, nearly 50,000 Ukrainian soldiers are believed to have died in the three-year-long war.

"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 cancelled the election... In reality, he is despised by the people of Ukraine," Musk tweeted.

The Tesla CEO, who is heading the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), also shared a report that cited US intelligence agencies to claim that Zelenskyy's approval rating was just 4 per cent.

Elections were due in Ukraine in 2024 after Zelenskyy completed his five-year tenure following his win in 2019. However, polls were suspended in the country due to the imposition of martial law amid its war with Russia.

TRUMP, ZELENSKYY IN WAR OF WORDS

The war of words between the Ukrainian President and the US administration began as Trump kick-started renewed efforts to reach a deal with Russia's Vladimir Putin to end the war in Ukraine.

The fast-moving developments, which included Trump's call with Putin and a meeting of the US Secretary of State with the Russian Foreign Minister in Saudi Arabia, have come as a huge shock to Ukraine. After all, consistent arms and ammunition supplies from the US and its European allies had helped the war-torn country stave off an aggressive Russia for three years.

That Ukraine was not invited for the negotiation talks in Saudi Arabia rankled Zelenskyy. Adding insult to injury, Trump also went on to blame Ukraine for starting the war. The war began after Russia invaded Ukrainian territory in February 2022.

Zelenskyy broke his silence by accusing Trump of living in a "disinformation bubble". However, it only invited more of Trump's wrath, with the President labelling him a "comedian" and a "dictator without elections".

"A modestly successful comedian, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, talked the United States of America into spending $350 billion dollars to go into a war that couldn’t be won," Trump said.

The tirade continued in another post, "Zelenskyy refuses to have elections, is very low in Ukrainian polls, and the only thing he was good at was playing Biden 'like a fiddle'. A dictator without elections, Zelenskyy better move fast, or he is not going to have a country left."

The avalanche of criticisms against Zelenskyy comes at a time when an increasingly transactional Trump has asked Ukraine to enter into a deal for $500 billion of its critical mineral resources in exchange for security support. However, such an agreement has been shot down by Zelenskyy.