At the end of April 2024, a complimentary assessment allegedly given to the President of the Russian Federation by the owner of the social network X went viral on the Internet. We decided to check whether the businessman said anything similar.

Some Russian media wrote about Musk’s remarks about Putin (for example, Ura.ru And "Notebook") And other informational portals, as well as users of social networks (“VKontakte", X, Facebook), blogging platforms And forums. This news spread widely on Telegram: they wrote about it “The world of Mikhail Onufrienko"(280,000 views at the time of writing this analysis), "Russia now"(239,000), "Uncle Slava"(226,000), "Observer"(200,000), Voblya (157,000) and other popular channels.

Many of these posts contain 56 seconds video with Musk. The entrepreneur’s speech in English is not audible; the supposed translation of his words into Russian is superimposed on the video: “Russia is a country that knows how to protect its national interests and traditional values. There is no room for idiotic LGBT elevation here. Here people are proud of their history, culture and faith. Russia does not turn poor countries into its slaves, but, on the contrary, helps them. There is a real leader here who is not afraid to tell the truth and act for the good of his people. His name is Vladimir Putin. I really respect him because, unlike other leaders, he never plays a hypocrite and tells the truth as it is. He never insults his opponents, which shows his strength. He is the only president who can speak to his people for several hours at a time without any problems and answer any uncomfortable questions. I will definitely meet him and shake his hand. Russia is an example of what a real strong and independent power should be. A country like this cannot be defeated.”

Musk has previously made pro-Russian statements. So, in October 2022 he offered its own version of a peace agreement between Russia and Ukraine, according to which Crimea should remain Russian, and Ukraine should assume obligations to maintain neutrality. In September 2023 appeared in the media information that Musk ordered the shutdown of Starlink Internet satellites, which he had previously provided in favor of Ukraine, and thereby thwarted an attack on Russian Navy ships in Crimea. True, the source of this statement is a biographical book about Musk, written by journalist Walter Isaacson, and the billionaire himself stated, which did not disable anything, since Starlink coverage in the Crimea region was not initially activated. In February 2024, entrepreneur spokethat Putin’s loss in the war with Ukraine is impossible.

Source: Telegram channel "Uncle Slava»

“Verified” was unable to find the quote that had circulated on the Internet in reputable English-language media and other sources. The largest Russian publications, both independent and censored, did not talk about Musk’s statement either. There is no viral phrase in account billionaire on his social network X, where Musk not only actively communicates with subscribers, but also often posts fragments of his interviews.

Fact checkers from the project "Myth detector» found the original video with Musk. This is a fragment of an interview that the entrepreneur gave to Don Lemon back on March 18th. Video conversation published on the YouTube channel of an American journalist. In the interview, which lasts more than an hour, Musk talks about content moderation at X, the upcoming US presidential election and Donald Trump's candidacy, racism and much more, but never mentions Russia or Putin.

The earliest publication with this video and quote that “Verified” was able to find was posted in the Telegram channel “Tucker Carlson in Russian» April 23, 2024 at 09:00 Moscow time. Two days later, the entry was deleted, but it remained in the archives of the TGStat service. In addition to the video itself, the post contained an advertisement for the Telegram channel “Mask's tweets in Russian", allegedly created by a businessman to be closer to the Russian audience. However, no evidence could be found that Musk is actually related to this resource.

The Tucker Carlson in Russian channel has previously been repeatedly caught spreading fake news. So, he published fake covers satirical magazines, reposted the news that the protesters farmers allegedly filled up the Ukrainian Embassy in Paris with manure, and became the primary source of the alleged Biden quotes about how in World War II the United States and Japan fought for common values.

Thus, Musk did not utter the words attributed to him about respect for Putin and the desire to shake his hand. The video is taken from an interview published in mid-March, where the businessman did not say anything like that; a fictitious Russian-language voiceover was superimposed on the cut fragment. For the first time, the analyzed video and quote appeared on the Telegram channel, which had previously been caught spreading fakes. This quote may have been made up to attract subscribers to a newly created channel allegedly owned by Musk.

Cover photo: Ministerio das comunicações, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons