Hold On Tight, Ukraine. Putin Is Tonguing Elon's Ear Again.

When Putin starts calling needy American losers brilliant, bad things happen.

Sep 13, 2023

Bad news for the world and bad news for Ukraine: Vladimir Putin is tickling Elon Musk’s nipples and calling him a good dog again. So Ukraine might want to save its work and fire up its mobile hotspots. Wouldn’t want that needy loser to turn off Ukraine’s internet again.

These were more of Putin’s words from the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok, where he already scolded the United States for failing to meet the high standards for democracy and freedom set by Russia, by holding Donald Trump accountable for being a lifelong criminal.

Russian President Vladimir Putin praised SpaceX and Tesla founder Elon Musk Tuesday as an “outstanding person” and “talented businessman” in remarks at the Eastern Economic Forum, according to Russia 24. “As for Elon Musk’s private business... He is definitely an outstanding person, it must be recognized,” Putin said. “I think this is recognized all over the world. An active and talented businessman.”

Oh God.

Now Elon is going to think he has a friend who’s a really cool guy who loves him for who he is. That is the worst message you can send to a guy like Elon. And that’s exactly why Putin is sending it. (It’s the same reason he flatters lonely, self-esteem-deficient loser Trump so much.)

This flattery from Putin is coming directly after the world learned that Elon prevented the use of Starlink in Crimea in September 2022 — either ahead of time, or in the thick of the action, there are conflicting stories — to prevent Ukraine from mounting a potentially crippling attack on the Russian navy. Elon let Putin confuse his dumb ass and convince him that letting Ukraine do that would escalate the war. Elon let Putin scare him and make him think if Ukraine mounted that attack, Putin might do nuclear bombs. Elon didn’t want to be “complicit” in letting Ukraine defend itself from the genocidal maniacs in its living room. The roads of Ukraine are littered with corpses that ended up there because Putin scared powerful men into thinking he was going to start dropping nukes if Ukraine really had what it needed to win the war.

For more on how Elon let Putin scare him, read Anne Applebaum. For an explanation of why, in stupidly believing Vladimir Putin, Elon’s idiot move “likely extended the war” and also itself “made a nuclear war more likely,” read Timothy Snyder. Oh yes. That’s how out-of-his-league stupid Elon Musk is here. Both articles are good sources for explaining the very real and devastating consequences for Ukraine when people let Putin manipulate and frighten them.

Here’s a bit of the Applebaum, explaining just how abjectly stupid it was for Elon to let Putin whisper in his ear, and what a moron he was for mouthing off that allowing the Ukrainian attack on Russia’s navy would result in a “non-trivial possibility” of nuclear war.

We’re excerpting a lot because it’s crucial information, and because Applebaum is such an elegant writer (emphasis ours):

These are details that you may have already heard. Many of them were first reported in May, by Oliver Carroll at The Economist. Since then, The New Yorker has also described how Ukrainian soldiers abruptly lost their access to Starlink on the battlefield during a different set of land operations. Isaacson’s version of the maritime story implies that all of the drones in the operation washed ashore that evening. But recently in Ukraine, I met some of the engineers who helped design the unmanned sea vehicles, including an engineer who was involved in the first attempt to hit Russian ships in Sebastopol. They told me that not all of the drones involved were lost. Some returned back to base, undamaged.
Here is the part you might not have heard, or not registered: The same team launched a similar attack again a few weeks later. On October 29, a fleet of guided sea drones packed with explosives did reach Sebastopol harbor, using a different communications system. They did hit their targets. They put one Russian frigate, the Admiral Makarov, out of commission. The team believes that they damaged at least one submarine and at least two other boats as well.
And then? Nuclear war did not follow. Despite Musk’s fears, in other words—fears put into his head by the Russian ambassador, or perhaps by Putin himself—World War III did not erupt as a result of this successful attack on a Crimean port. Instead, the Russian naval commanders were spooked by the attack, so much so that they stuck close to Sebastopol harbor over the following weeks.

Huh. No escalation. No nuclear war. Huh!

Applebaum adds that “Instead of inspiring World War III, the sea-drone attack helped reduce violence, protected commerce, boosted Ukrainian farmers, and maybe even ensured that some people outside Ukraine didn’t go hungry.” Moreover:

If not for Musk’s hubris, those effects might have been felt earlier. Maybe the first attack could have eliminated more of the ships whose missiles have been killing civilians in Ukrainian cities. Maybe fewer people would have died as a result. And maybe the war, which will be over when Ukraine takes back its own territory, and ends the torment of its own citizens on that territory, would be closer to its end.

Toward the end of her piece, Applebaum writes, “Death, horror, and terror have been the result every time outsiders hesitated to aid Ukraine.”

Hey, remember what Putin did when Yevgeny Prigozhin led a Wagner march to Moscow that people thought might be a coup in progress, and instead of greeting the threat head-on, Putin gave a speech and ran away to another city to hide? Timothy Snyder wrote about that at the time. Wonkette wrote back then that we “Might want to bookmark that [Snyder article] for safekeeping, next time some asslicking Republican sycophant for the Kremlin starts whining about how our support for Ukraine is going to force poor Putin to start World War III.”

Maybe the asslicking Republican sycophant for the Kremlin in question should go ahead and print all these articles out and put them on his refrigerator.

Here’s an interview with Applebaum from “Morning Joe”: