(Moscow) Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov showed off his skills behind the wheel of a Cybertruck Tesla armed with a machine gun and praised the American brand’s billionaire boss, Elon Musk, in a video posted online on Saturday.
“I extend my sincere thanks to Elon Musk. He is clearly the main genius of our time, a specialist, a great man,” said the leader of the small Russian republic in the Caucasus, inviting Elon Musk to Grozny.
The video shows him briefly testing the electric car brand’s futuristic pickup truck, which is topped with a machine gun mounted on the roof of the vehicle.
” This Cybertruck “is full of qualities and will be sent to the zone of the Special Military Operation,” he said, using the official name given in Russia to the armed intervention in Ukraine.
Ramzan Kadyrov, 47, has ruled Chechnya with an iron fist for more than 17 years and is a staunch supporter of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Chechen troops are taking part in Mr Putin’s large-scale offensive in Ukraine launched in February 2022.
The electric pick-up Cybertruck Tesla was presented in 2019 and went into production last year.
Elon Musk, the multi-billionaire owner of Tesla, X (formerly Twitter) and SpaceX, has been blowing hot and cold since the start of the Russian offensive in Ukraine in 2022, sometimes providing the Ukrainian army with his Starlink satellite link service, sometimes proposing that Kyiv cede territory to Moscow to end the conflict.
He recently showed his support for the Republican candidate in the American presidential election, Donald Trump.