SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk has given his take on how to end the crisis between Russia and Ukraine.
“Redo elections of annexed regions under UN supervision. Russia leaves if that is will of the people. Crimea formally part of Russia, as it has been since 1783 (until Khrushchev’s mistake). Water supply to Crimea assured. Ukraine remains neutral,” the billionaire tweeted Monday.
“This is highly likely to be the outcome in the end – just a question of how many die before then. Also worth noting that a possible, albeit unlikely, outcome from this conflict is nuclear war,” Musk warned.
The businessmen included a poll in his original post, with over 447,000 followers voting as of this writing. The margin was split 46 “yes” to 53 “no” on Musk’s proposal.
“Wonder how many bots were activated to turn around the original result,” one person asked. “Indeed. Biggest bot attack I’ve ever seen,” Musk replied.
Tesla’s stocks tumbled nearly 9 percent after Musk's peace plan tweet.
The South African-born billionaire has repeatedly weighed in on the crisis in Ukraine in recent months, reportedly expressing concerns about the prospect of World War III breaking out as one of the reasons why he scuttled his plans to purchase Twitter earlier this year.
In May, Musk took flak from now former Roscosmos chief Dmitri Rogozin, who accused him of supporting neo-Nazi fighters in Ukraine by providing the Ukrainian military with Starlink satellite internet terminals.
The Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics and the Russian-administered areas of Kherson and Zaporozhye joined Russia after their leaders signed accession agreements in the Kremlin on Friday. The territories became part of Russia after status referendums were held September 23-27, in which between 87-99 percent of each region’s residents voted in favor.
Crimea joined Russia after a referendum in March 2014 in which an overwhelming majority of residents similarly voted in favor of doing so. The peninsula had been part of Russia since its conquest by Catherine the Great before being handed over to the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic by Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev as an internal administrative division within the Soviet Union in 1954. When the USSR collapsed, it temporarily became part of Ukraine before rejoining Russia.