TASS cited Putin, who was speaking on Russia’s space policy at a meeting with students, as saying: “You know, there’s a person who lives in the States, you could say that he’s absolutely crazy about Mars.”
It quoted him as drawing a comparison between Musk and Sergei Korolev, a Soviet engineer who was instrumental in the Soviet Union’s success in sending Yuri Gagarin on the world’s first crewed spaceflight in 1961.
Putin has previously praised Musk, whose business interests include the SpaceX space technology company, as “an outstanding person”.Musk, a top advisor to U.S. President Donald Trump, has become increasingly vocal in his criticism of Ukraine, which has been fighting against Russia since 2022, when the Kremlin ordered tens of thousands of troops into its neighbour’s territory.
