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© Thomson Reuters 2022.Musk and Zelenskiy in Twitter showdown over billionaire's peace plan
By Michelle Nichols UNITED NATIONS©2024 GPlusMedia Inc.
26 Comments
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Desert Tortoise
Ukraine's ambassador to Germany said it best.
plasticmonkey
Even if such a referendum were to be monitored fairly (and that’s a huge if), the results would be skewed in Russia’s favor. Large portions of pro-Ukraine residents have fled the region, and those remaining live in such fear of Russian brutality that they would be unlikely to vote to remain with Ukraine.
Elon Musk may be a brilliant businessman, but he’s a real twit about anything else, especially politics.
wallace
Putin has no intention of leaving Eastern and Southern Ukraine.
englisc aspyrgend
Musk is sadly misguided or has not properly thought this through if he really thinks his plan is reasonable. I wonder if he would be quite so keen if his business competitors seized his factory and claimed the workers had voted to transfer the plant to them and he should just accept it. Oh and later they would want all the rest.
To reward russia and poo tins illegal invasion and nuclear threats in this way would mean the end of any rules based world and yes powerful though the USA is it would suffer as well, which is why every civilised country the US included is determined rat Russia will be driven out of all the territories it has stolen.
plasticmonkey
Invading another country and "annexing" their land is bad. Period.
If you want to play this relativism game, let's put it this way: Putin and his sadistic army of rapists, torturers, and executioners make almost anybody on the planet look "good". I wish them all the worst.
dagon
I think Musk believes the AI superintelligence supervised mass referendums in his admired Iain Banks Culture series are a real thing.
His world foremost democracy still is roiling over the question of free and fair elections.
Cards fan
No surprise there.
Ahem, "special operation," and unless one is Ukrainian, you don't get a say in the what kind of peace deal they accept.
This half-brained solution is remarkably stupid. I can't imagine any country, Russia included, would like it if another country invaded and then tried to organize a vote to legitimize the stealing of their land.
Russia can't be trusted anyway, so there's no point in making a deal with them unless they're on their feet begging for peace.
asdfghjkl
Its what happens when someone thinks they are clever. Musk definitely is, and of course his idea is an option, but such ideas although known are not entertained when you look at the character of the two countries, what they have experienced and the future implications. If the world had thought liked Musk, Nazi Germany would still exist. Thank god they didn’t. Actions that are wrong should not be rewarded.
Bob Fosse
I’d like to quote Mr Melnyk but in this case a direct quote from the article would get me banned.
ArtistAtLarge
Musk is WAY out of his league.
ClippetyClop
They aren't going to surrender. Despite lots of American right-wingers wanting them to.
RowanM
This is a huge, childish oversimplification. There is a vast difference between "Russia won anyway" (which may or may not happen) and "We let Russia have whatever they wanted as long as it was a smaller country and everyone agreed that people shouldn't fight back".
Calling them "essentially identical outcomes" is implying that there are no greater ramifications to this war other than "Russia gets parts of Ukraine". There are tons of other things happening here. People around the world (including Putin and other world leaders) are seeing what happens in this situation. It has huge meaning to keep fighting back now even if you lose (there is such a thing as a Pyrrhic victory), such as whether they will decide to blithely invade other countries in the future. The more people fight back here, the less likely other similar things are because people will see how much they cost and how little they gain for it.
cleo
Kudos for the Starlinks.
Could it be the sudden switch to 'Let Russia have everything they demand, for the sake of 'peace'', is a sign that the serious risk of Russian cyberattack is no longer just a risk?
Has Musk been hacked? Taken cyber-hostage? Standing to lose a lot more than the pocket-change $80 million?
Seems there'a a lot of it about these days. My Roomba suddenly started talking Russian a little while after the invasion (though how the orcs imagined that would help their speshul millidarie operayshun, I do not know).
JTC
Maybe Musk's account was hacked by Russian Sympathizers ?
And anyway, what will holding another vote achieve ? Russia will simply bus in Russians to take the place of Ukrainians in such a vote.
Cards fan
Waiting on the critical evaluation. I certainly haven't seen it in this braindead election idea.
Maybe we can vote on annexing large swaths of Russia?
Nemo
We should take this clownish trolling as seriously as we take his crypto strategy.
theFu
I'd agree to UN monitored elections in Ukraine 1 yr after all fighting and intimidation ends in the areas. The same frame for Afghanistan national and provincial elections with similar UN monitoring. A year of stable govt is needed for people to determine what they really want, have discussions about the type of country they want and then a few months to setup elections and processes for those elections.
There are a few things where I listen to Musk. Then there are the 20M other things where he is an idiot.
lostrune2
The US was 10x the population of North Vietnam in the 1970s, so victory for North Vietnam was unlikely in total war
The problem with that is the whole population of the US and now of Russia won't support a total war
A lot of their population do not support the war - they don't see the war as a fight for their country
So there won't ever be a total war in the first place, and the amount of population matters less
JTC
Instead of aggressively Invading other Countries, Putin should look at the British Commonwealth as a model for former Russian States to join up to without compromising their own individual Sovereignty.
Kobe White Bar Owner
Why does Nusk have a pic of Matt Damon on his Twitter?:0)
Sh1mon M4sada
I am with Musk on this one. People die needlessly for the same outcome is totally dumb. Not only that, economic chaos, starvation in the rest of the world doesn't need to have happened, again for the same end outcome. AND we haven't even talked about potential for nukes, or environmental catastrophe.
Do you honestly think the average Ukrainian taking refuge in Poland or Hungary really cares who wins the war, or how many countries join NATO etc.?
What ever happened to the peaceful, stable world mission that the west so proudly claim to pursue?
kurisupisu
Very black and white reasoning here!
Ukraine cannot possibly win this war.
More weapons for Ukraine and more money for the west?
Zelenskyy doesn’t seem to want peace.
Yeh Musk!
Nobody should stop us Germans supplying weapons to Ukraine!
Blacklabel
No he just realizes as we all should that one side being “bad” (Russia) doesn’t automatically make the other side “good” by default without any critical evaluation.
Is every country that was ever “invaded” by a neighbor…good?
Blacklabel
liberals already forgot the Starlinks he gave in the early days at a financial loss so that Ukraine would have internet access at great risk to himself and his companies.
FizzBit
I am exactly with Elon on this. Anything to realistically stop the war. It is a great pulse checker as well as a Psychological representation of the public by the fact that Elon gets immediately labeled “pro-Russia” says it all. I would expect nothing less when Biden/DC, UK, EU/Davos gang want a war and their corporate media lapdogs have shifted the blame.
Blacklabel
Its true. despite lots of people not wanting it to be.