Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, challenged Vladimir Putin to a single battle over Ukraine on Monday.
Musk addressed the Russian president directly in a tweet, typing out Putin’s name in Russian.
“I hereby challenge [Vladimir Putin] to single combat,” he wrote.
Musk then added, “Stakes are крана (Ukraine),” while also writing out the country’s name in Ukrainian.
I hereby challenge
Владимир Путин
to single combatStakes are Україна
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 14, 2022
Musk had also tweeted about 20 minutes before volunteering to take on Putin: “By the pricking of my thumbs.”
The line is from Shakespeare’s Macbeth and is used to allude to a sense of foreboding – it is followed by the phrase “Something wicked this way comes” in the play.
Shortly before that, the SpaceX billionaire had also tweeted in cryptic terms: “There is a beauty to the biological substrate.”
While it’s unclear what he meant by this, the Independent reports that the phrase is commonly used in neuroscience and psychology, two fields in which Musk has expressed interest through his start-up, Neuralink.
The 50-year-old recently responded to Ukraine’s call for assistance by sending Starlink terminals to the country.
The Russian invasion has severely harmed internet connectivity in Ukraine, according to Reuters, with the southern and eastern parts of the country – where fighting has been the most intense – being the hardest hit.
