Musk posts meme with Zelenskyy on military aid, Ukraine reacts

Musk made a post on Twitter.

The meme depicts a character with the face of the president of Ukraine.

"When it's been 5 minutes and you haven't asked for a billion dollars in aid," the post says. 

On October 1, US President Joe Biden signed a law approved by Congress that will extend funding for the government for 45 days, until November 17. The law does not provide for the allocation of funds for Ukraine.

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="zxx" dir="ltr"><a href="https://t.co/W9i9YEM8uA">pic.twitter.com/W9i9YEM8uA</a></p>&mdash; Elon Musk (@elonmusk) <a href="https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1708629197617336398?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 1, 2023</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

Ukraine's response

Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to the head of the President's Office, wrote that any support for Russia is an investment in murder, and mocking Ukraine is encouraging Russian propaganda.

"Any support for Russia today is a direct investment in war, genocide, murder of the free world, escalation and the right to impunity. Any silence or irony over Ukraine today is an unconditional encouragement of Russian propaganda that justifies mass violence and destruction," Podolyak said.

"Unfortunately, not everyone and not always, being important media figures, but being thousands of kilometers away from the epicenter of the war, is able to realize what daily bombings and cries of children losing their parents are like," he added.

In turn, the speaker of the Verkhovna Rada, Ruslan Stefanchuk, wrote: "The case when a dude tried to conquer space, but something went wrong and in 5 minutes he was up to his eyeballs in shit."

• On October 1, U.S. President Joe Biden signed a bill to temporarily fund the government until November 17, which had been approved the day before by the US Senate and House of Representatives. Before signing it, Biden issued a statement saying that the deal did not include new funding to continue supporting Ukraine.

• Ukraine's Ambassador to the United States Oksana Markarova said that the adoption of the draft temporary budget in the United States does not threaten the supply of weapons and equipment that was approved earlier.