In perhaps his most daring challenge to date, outspoken inventor Elon Musk is challenging war-mongering Russian President Vladimir Putin to a fight.
He did so using the Latin and Cyrillic alphabets on Twitter Monday. The winner, he said, would control the fate of Ukraine.
“I hereby challenge Владимир Путин to single combat,” Musk wrote early Monday morning. “Stakes are Україна.”
It’s unlikely Putin, cut off from the free world while waging an unprovoked attack against neighboring Ukraine, would accept the challenge with the inventor, whose $23 billion worth reportedly makes him the world’s richest man on record. However, Putin’s actual worth is not known and some estimates put the longtime Russian leader’s value at $200 billion in assets, according to Fortune.
While neither billionaire owns Ukraine, Putin’s armed forces are making strides in occupying the sovereign Eastern European nation they began invading on Feb. 24. At least one person asked Musk on Twitter if he thought his challenge was a good idea.
Though Musk, 50, is 19 years Putin’s junior and stands roughly six inches taller than the former KGB agent, Putin is a trained martial artist with a black belt in judo. It’s also a fact that Putin’s rivals tend to turn up dead.
Black Belt magazine reports that Musk told podcast host Joe Rogan that he trained in several martial arts disciplines as a child, including judo.
Musk’s Space X technologies company struck a blow against Putin at the start of the attack on Ukraine by making the operation’s Starlink internet terminals available to the war-town nation as it struggles to maintain communications amid ground and air strikes. Ukrainian officials thanked Musk on Twitter for “supporting Ukraine and peace in the entire world!”
