Elon Musk, a billionaire tech mogul and close adviser to U.S. President Donald Trump, has said a large-scale “cyberattack” on his social media platform came from “the Ukraine area,” sparking backlash online ahead of a crucial day for U.S.-Ukrainian talks.
Why It Matters
Musk, who heads the Department of Government Efficiency, has repeatedly criticized Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, and Kyiv’s armed forces lean heavily on Musk’s Starlink constellation to coordinate its military effort against Russia. SpaceX, Musk’s aerospace firm, owns Starlink.
Relations between Zelensky and top U.S. officials have become increasingly strained, with Washington halting military support for and intelligence sharing with Kyiv. On Tuesday, senior Trump officials are set to meet a Ukrainian delegation in Saudi Arabia for peace talks amid Russia’s war in Ukraine, with tentative signals that the White House could restart some of its support. However, Musk’s comments highlight the ongoing tension between the two countries.
Aaron Schwartz/picture-alliance/dpa/AP Images
What To Know
On Monday, Musk said X—the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, which he owns—was targeted by a “massive cyberattack” carried out with “a lot of resources.”
“Either a large, coordinated group and/or a country is involved,” Musk added. He did not elaborate on his claims but said “tracing” was underway.
On Downdetector, a website that tracks outages across apps and platforms, users reported problems accessing X, with outage reports spiking several times on Monday.
In an interview with Fox Business, Musk said the apparent attack on the platform had come from “the Ukraine area.”
“We’re not sure exactly what happened,” the tech CEO said, “but there was a massive cyberattack to try to bring down the X system with IP addresses originating in the Ukraine area.”
Dark Storm Team, a pro-Palestinian hacker group, has claimed responsibility for carrying out a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack on X, which is designed to inundate a platform into temporarily malfunctioning.
Oleksandr Merezhko, the head of Ukraine’s parliamentary Foreign Affairs Committee, told Newsweek that the Ukrainian government “absolutely” had no involvement in the reported cyberattack on X. It wouldn’t be in Ukraine’s interest to orchestrate such an attack, Merezhko said.
Several social media users criticized Musk’s comments, including one account that suggested Ukraine was an “easy scapegoat.”
Musk’s remarks follow a series of contentious exchanges he’s had on X, including calling Senator Mark Kelly a “traitor” after the Democrat visited Ukraine.
On Sunday, Kelly wrote on X that Kyiv’s backers “can’t give up on the Ukrainian people” and that any ceasefire agreement brokered to stop the fighting “has to protect Ukraine’s security and can’t be a giveaway to [Russian President Vladimir] Putin.”
“Donald Trump is trying to weaken Ukraine’s hand and we are owed an explanation,” Kelly added. Responding to the post, Musk wrote, “You are a traitor.”
Musk also became embroiled in an X spat with Polish Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski on Sunday. Musk described Starlink as “the backbone of the Ukrainian army,” adding that Kyiv’s “entire front line would collapse if I turned it off.”
Sikorski responded by saying Warsaw had funneled $50 million each year into providing Starlink access to Ukraine. He also suggested that Poland would look elsewhere for similar suppliers “if SpaceX proves to be an unreliable provider.”
“Be quiet, small man,” Musk replied. “You pay a tiny fraction of the cost. And there is no substitute for Starlink.”
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio also joined the public exchange, saying there had been no threats made around Kyiv’s access to Starlink.
What People Are Saying
Oliver Alexander, an open-source intelligence analyst, wrote on X: “Pro-Palestinian hacker group takes credit for the DDOS attack. Elon predictably rushes to blame Ukraine.”
Bluesky user Tatarigami wrote on the platform: “Constantly linking everything back to Ukraine and Ukrainians reminds me of a political platform that once rose to prominence in a powerful European state. Fueled by conspiracy theories, it found an easy scapegoat for the country’s setbacks. It did not end well.”
What Happens Next
It remains to be seen how the U.S.-Ukrainian talks in Saudi Arabia will progress or whether Musk’s comments will have implications on the negotiations, which Kyiv hopes will smooth its fraught relations with Washington.