Vladimir Putin lauds Elon Musk as rare pioneer

Tech billionaire and Donald Trump administration adviser Elon Musk has won the admiration of another president: Russia’s Vladimir Putin.

Speaking to students at Bauman Moscow State Technical University on Wednesday, Putin described Musk as a rare visionary, according to Russian state-owned media outlet TASS.

“You know, there’s a man — he lives in the [United] States — Musk, who, one might say, raves about Mars,” Putin said.

“It is not often that such people, charged with a certain idea, appear in the human population,” he added, going on to compare Musk to Soviet rocket engineer Sergei Korolev, who led the USSR’s space program during the Space Race with the U.S. in the 1950s and 1960s.

It is not the first time Putin has praised Musk. In an interview with former Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson last year, the Russian president said there is “no stopping Elon Musk” and spoke of his desire to “find common ground” on areas such as artificial intelligence.

Musk, for his part, has been accused by Kyiv of parroting Kremlin talking points about Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and spreading pro-Russian propaganda.

The tech entrepreneur, who rocketed to political prominence after backing Trump to win the 2024 U.S. presidential election, has condemned the provision of American aid to Kyiv without an “end game” and has repeatedly hit out at Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.