A Tesla Cybertruck with a machine gun fitted to its roof was paraded across social media this weekend by Russian forces. It’s a pretty terrifying sight to behold, especially as it’s in the hands of Chechen warlord Ramzan Kadyrov, who is the leader of Russia’s forces in the Chechnya region.
Kadyrov revealed the Cybertruck in a video posted online in which he claims that the truck is preparing for deployment in Russia’s war against Ukraine, reports Reuters:
Kadyrov, known for extravagant publicity stunts, heaped praise on both the vehicle and Tesla Motors chief executive Elon Musk on the Telegram messaging app, calling him the “strongest genius of modern times” and inviting Musk to Chechnya.
“We… await your future products that will help us finish the special military operation,” Kadyrov wrote, using the official term by which Russia describes its war in Ukraine.
Initially, Kadyrov made it sound as though the truck had been gifted to him or the Russian forces by Tesla boss Elon Musk himself. The head of the Chechen Republic wrote on social media platform Telegram that he had “received a Tesla Cybertruck from the respected Elon Musk.”
He went on to describe the truck as “invulnerable,” “fast,” “comfortable” and “maneuverable,” reports CNN. However, despite the high praise being plastered on his electric creation, Musk has been quick to distance himself from any rumors that the Cybertruck was a gift from him or Tesla itself.
The company boss did what he always does in these kinds of situations and took to Twitter X to quash any kind of ideas that he gave Kadyrov the truck, reports Politico:
Elon Musk on Monday denied that he gifted Chechnya’s strongman leader Ramzan Kadyrov a Cybertruck.
“Are you seriously so retarded that you think I donated a Cybertruck to a Russian general?” Musk wrote on his social media platform, X.
“Yet another example of how much the legacy media lies,” he added.
If Musk and Tesla didn’t gift the truck to Russia, then how the heck did it get overseas? As it stands, the U.S. is the only place the truck can be sold, despite efforts ongoing to ship models to Canada as well. In Europe, it doesn’t look like it will pass many pedestrian safety tests that are required for sale on EU roads. Still, that didn’t stop one Cybertruck from getting stuck in a European lake already this year, as well as one getting totaled in China in June.
Sanctions placed on Kadyrov by the U.S. for various human rights violations should probably prevent Tesla from dealing with him, but it just goes to show, with enough money anyone can get anything they want, politics be damned.
