OREANDA-NEWS The founder of Tesla and SpaceX, Elon Musk, renamed his Twitter account from Elon to Elona after the head of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov, advised him to «pump up» in order to become a brutal Elon from «gentle Elona». Kadyrov made his statement after the businessman challenged Vladimir Putin to a «duel» on March 14, in which Ukraine would be the stake. Then Kadyrov suggested that Musk and Russian President have «different weight categories».

After renaming the account, Kadyrov again recommended that Mask not compete with Putin and promised to challenge him on his own, again calling himself «Putin's infantryman». «And then it won't be a funny harmless correspondence anymore», Kadyrov wrote.

At the same time, he praised the founder of Tesla for the decision not to block the Russian sites of the Starlink network created by Musk, noting that he sincerely appreciates people «with their vision of the situation and unwavering will», respects for «character and the absence of double standards».

«Musk, I hope you were joking about my president after all», the head of Chechnya added. «We will not do this, except at gunpoint. I'm sorry, but I absolutely support freedom of speech», Musk said earlier in his decision regarding the blockages.

Dmitry Rogozin, the head of Roscosmos, also reacted to Musk's decision to challenge Putin to a duel earlier. He quoted on Twitter a quote from Alexander Pushkin's «The Tale of the Priest and his Employee Balda»: «You, imp, are still young, you're weak to compete with me; it would only be a waste of time. Pass my brother first».

In April 2020, Rogozin accused SpaceX of dumping prices for launch services. After that, Musk said that Russian missiles are disposable and are not suitable for repeated launches. Rogozin responded to this with a message saying that Roscosmos does not need Washington's instructions.