Thu 17 April 2025:

Russian President Vladimir Putin has told university students that the world’s richest man was a pioneer comparable to legendary rocket engineer Sergei Korolev, a hero of the Soviet communist era.

The comments came as Russia and the United States forged closer ties under Trump’s administration, of which billionaire SpaceX founder Elon Musk is a key figure.

“You know, there’s a man – he lives in the States – Musk, who, you could say, raves about Mars,” Putin told students on a visit to Bauman University, a Moscow college that specialises in science and engineering.

“These are the kind of people who don’t often appear in the human population, charged-up with a certain idea,” he said of Musk, who has been a frequent critic of Ukraine.

“If it seems incredible even today, such ideas often come to fruition after a while. Just like the ideas of Korolev, our pioneers, came about in due time,” Putin added.

Korolev is considered the father of the Soviet space programme, developing the first satellite Sputnik as well as Vostok 1, which carried first cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin into orbit in 1961.

__________________________________________________________________________

https://whatsapp.com/channel/0029VaAtNxX8fewmiFmN7N22

__________________________________________________________________________

investigation into a Wall Street Journal report

In 2024, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson demanded a probe into a Wall Street Journal article claiming that SpaceX founder and Trump associate Elon Musk has maintained “regular contact” with Russian President Vladimir Putin since late 2022.

The report, which said the SpaceX founder has discussed “personal topics, business and geopolitical tensions” with the Russian leader, raises national security concerns as SpaceX’s relationships with NASA and the US military may have granted Musk access to sensitive government information and US intelligence.

“I don’t know that that story is true. I think it should be investigated,” Nelson told Semafor’s Burgess Everett. “If the story is true that there have been multiple conversations between Elon Musk and the president of Russia, then I think that would be concerning, particularly for NASA, for the Department of Defense, for some of the intelligence agencies.”

Some US officials have raised counterintelligence concerns in the last year about Musk’s interactions with US adversaries like Russia, but the US intelligence community is wary of looking into those interactions because Musk is an American citizen, an official familiar with the matter told CNN.

SOURCE: INDEPENDENT PRESS AND NEWS AGENCIES

__________________________________________________________________________

FOLLOW INDEPENDENT PRESS:

WhatsApp CHANNEL
https://whatsapp.com/channel/0029VaAtNxX8fewmiFmN7N22