Ukraine’s Verkhovna Rada and its speaker mocked South African billionaire Elon Musk on Monday after he posted a meme mocking President Volodymyr Zelenskyi’s request for military aid, Reuters reported.

Musk owns the aerospace company SpaceX, which provides Ukraine with satellite Internet, a service vital to Kyiv’s military efforts. But the billionaire’s comments and actions have repeatedly sparked anger in Ukraine since the Russian invasion began last year.

Earlier on Monday, Musk posted a meme on X, the social media platform he bought last year and recently rebranded, featuring a picture of President Volodymyr Zelensky next to the message “When 5 minutes have passed and you haven’t asked for a billion dollars in help.”

The Ukrainian leader and other senior officials in Kyiv have repeatedly called on Western partners to provide military assistance to counter the invasion launched by Vladimir Putin and liberate the country from Moscow’s forces.

Ukrainian officials accuse Musk of spreading Russian propaganda

Ruslan Stefanchuk, the speaker of Ukraine’s unicameral parliament, mocked Musk in his own post on X, formerly Twitter:

“A case of a guy @elonmusk trying to conquer space, but something went wrong and 5 minutes later he was in shit up to his eyes,” he wrote, sharing the billionaire’s original post.

Stefanchuk’s post appears to refer to SpaceX’s botched launch in April, when both stages of the Starship rocket exploded shortly after launch.

The Ukrainian parliament accused Musk on the legislature’s X-page of spreading Russian propaganda, posting its own version of a meme shared by Musk with the message: “When 5 minutes have passed and you haven’t spread Russian propaganda.”

Presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak, who has criticized Musk’s other statements in the past, in turn noted that silence or mockery of Ukraine in the context of the Russian invasion is a game of Russian propaganda.

“Unfortunately, not everyone and not all the time, but important media figures thousands of kilometers from the epicenter of the war cannot understand what the daily bombings and the cries of children who lose their parents mean,” he wrote on X.

The comments by Ukrainian officials came as the European Commission said last week that X, the social network owned by Musk, is a major social platform for disinformation about the war in Ukraine and the spread of Russian propaganda.

Follow the latest events of the 586th day of the war in Ukraine LIVETEXT on HOTNEWS.RO.