The program on the Russia-1 channel, which pushes fiery anti-Western rhetoric and the pro-Kremlin line on the war in Ukraine, featured a segment about the Tesla CEO on Wednesday.
Standing in front of a screen showing Musk’s tweet, anchor Olga Skabeyeva read out how the world’s richest man had put forward a four-point plan for peace.
This included redoing elections under U.N. supervision in the four Ukrainian regions that President Vladimir Putin has claimed he has annexed—the provinces of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson.
Musk also called for the Crimean peninsula that Moscow seized in 2014 to be made formally part of Russia, guarantees that the territory has a working water supply and for Kyiv to remain neutral.
Skabeyeva also read out how Musk had asked his followers to respond to the question of whether the people of annexed regions should decide whether they are part of Ukraine or Russia, with the results of the informal poll showing that 59.3 percent agreed while 40.7 percent disagreed.
She emphasized that “nearly three million people voted” in the informal poll.
She did not mention that the result of Musk’s informal poll showed 59 percent of those who responded rejected his overall peace plan.
She then introduced a video which started with light music and showed Musk goofing around at public events, followed by a series of clips from Ukrainian programs reporting his now purported support for Russia. One was captioned “Elon Musk-va” in a play on the Ukrainian and Russian words for the Russian capital.
Skabeyeva revisited Musk’s poll on Thursday’s program, saying that Ukrainians “are still bothered by Elon Musk, or Elon Muskovsky, as we call him” in a pun on the Russian adjective for Moscow. “The billionaire has proposed defending the will of Russian residents in Ukraine.”
In front of a video wall showing another of his tweets, she said “he has published a map with the election results of 2012,” which shows the “Russian population in the south east” who voted for pro-Russian parties.
The blue areas in the southeast overlap with the four oblasts, or provinces, that Putin declared last week were part of Russia. “Musk reminds us that people in those regions want to be a part of Russia,” Skabeyeva said, smiling, adding that “in general Elon is moving in the right direction.”
A screengrab of the anchor in front of the map was tweeted by Francis Scarr, of BBC Monitoring, who expressed the inevitability of Russian television embracing Musk’s comments, writing, “well that was a surprise.”
Musk’s suggestions have sparked anger from Kyiv, which had previously welcomed his provision of his company’s Starlink terminals for Ukraine to provide remote internet access. That move earned him popularity in Ukraine and an invitation for a visit by President Volodymyr Zelensky when the war was over.
But Zelensky gave short shrift to Musk this week, posting his own Twitter poll, asking followers, “Which @elonmusk do you like more?” alongside the choices “one who supports Ukraine” and “one who supports Russia.”
Meanwhile, Ukrainian diplomat Andrij Melnyk’s succinct response was “F**k off is my very diplomatic reply to you @elonmusk.”
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba tweeted that those calling for Ukraine to give up on its people and land “must stop using word ‘peace’ as an euphemism to ’let Russians murder and rape thousands more innocent Ukrainians, and grab more land’.”
