Tech billionaire and confidant of U.S. President Donald Trump, Elon Musk‘s, claim that a “massive cyberattack” on his X social media platform came from Ukraine is “very bad timing,” the head of Ukraine’s parliamentary foreign affairs committee has said, as high-level U.S.-Ukrainian talks get underway in the Middle East.
Musk, who rose to prominence heading up automotive company Tesla, the SpaceX aerospace firm and X — formerly Twitter — before earning the president’s ear, said on Monday that his social media platform was targeted by a “massive cyberattack,” carried out with “a lot of resources.”
DownDetector, a website that tracks outages across apps and platforms, reported several spikes on problems accessing X, reported by the site’s users on Monday.
“Either a large, coordinated group and/or a country is involved,” Musk said. He did not elaborate on his claims further, but said “tracing” was underway. In a later interview with Fox Business, Musk said the apparent attack on the platform had come from “the Ukraine area.”
AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite
“We’re not sure exactly what happened,” Musk said, “but there was a massive cyberattack to try and bring down the X system with IP addresses originating in the Ukraine area.”
Musk has not provided evidence to back up suggestions the attack came from Ukraine, Oleksandr Merezhko, a Ukrainian politician who chairs Ukraine’s foreign affairs committee, told Newsweek.
Merezhko said he was “absolutely sure” that the Ukrainian government was not involved, adding it was not in Kyiv’s interest to mastermind such a move.
Pro-Palestinian hacker group Dark Storm Team has claimed responsibility for carrying out a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack on X, designed to inundate a platform into temporarily malfunctioning.
Merezhko floated the idea that Russia could have pulled strings behind the apparent assault on X, in some form of “provocation.” Ivan Stupak, a former official with Ukraine’s SBU security service, told Newsweek that authorities were considering whether Moscow could be responsible, or have “at least backed this attack.”
Newsweek has reached out to the Russian Defense Ministry for comment via email.
“Ukraine is not interested in such attacks because it can only spoil relations with Musk and the U.S.,” Merezhko said. But the “massive cyberattack” is “very bad timing,” he continued.
Senior Ukrainian officials, including the chief of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky‘s office, Andriy Yermak, as well as Kyiv’s foreign and defense ministers, are meeting with high-ranking Trump administration officials in the Saudi port city of Jeddah on Tuesday. Zelensky himself, while he traveled to Saudi Arabia and met with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, is not attending.
There are high hopes that Ukraine can mend its fraught relations with the country that had been Kyiv’s biggest backer, but has veered toward a more conciliatory tone to Russia since Trump strode back into the White House.
It is the first in-person meeting between high-profile Ukrainian and U.S. figures since Trump and Vice-President JD Vance publicly berated Zelensky in the Oval Office, prompting Ukraine’s other allies to squirm uncomfortably and rally around Kyiv while tiptoeing around open condemnation of Trump.
Musk’s remarks on the eve of the meeting in Jeddah do not “bode well” for ties between Washington and Kyiv, Merezkho said.
When an official like Musk, who is steering the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) that is almost constantly hitting the headlines, “makes such statements without any evidence — without proof — only […] allegations, unsubstantiated, it is a cause for concern,” Merezkho said.
“Especially now, when we have this meeting,” the committee chief added.
Musk has himself been critical, particularly of Ukraine’s leader, while Kyiv leans heavily on Musk’s Starlink constellation to coordinate its military effort against Russia. Starlink is owned by Musk’s aerospace firm, SpaceX. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in recent days, during a separate, barbed exchange with Polish Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski that involved Musk, that “no one has made any threats about cutting Ukraine off from Starlink.”
Striding into the talks on Tuesday, Rubio said he expected them to be “good,” offering a thumbs-up when questioned on his assessment of how the discussions would pan out.
“We hope for practical outcomes,” Zelensky said in a statement on Monday.
“The meeting started very constructively. We are working,” Yermak then posted on Tuesday.
Expected to be up for discussion is the thorny issue of U.S. security guarantees for any ceasefire deal for Ukraine, something Kyiv and NATO states outside of the U.S. have insisted is necessary. Kyiv arrived with a “viable ceasefire proposal,” Merezkho said in a statement on social media, after reports circulated indicating Ukraine would propose a partial ceasefire covering air and sea.
Russia has opposed this idea, and Merezhko told Newsweek he was doubtful Russian President Vladimir Putin would sign his name to such a deal. There are also pressing questions about the state of a contentious mineral agreement between Ukraine and the U.S.
Ukraine has in many ways been forced to the negotiating table by the White House, which cut off all U.S. military aid bound for Ukraine and suspended some U.S.-derived intelligence used by Kyiv.
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer has said he hopes the Saudi talks will “enable U.S. aid and intelligence sharing to be restarted,” a spokesperson for the U.K. leader said on Monday.
“I’m carefully optimistic,” Merezhko said.