Warlord Says Musk Pulled the Plug on His Cybertruck

'That's not manly,' Ramzan Kadyrov posts
By Bob Cronin,  Newser Staff
Posted Sep 20, 2024 5:00 PM CDT
Warlord Says Musk Disabled Cybertruck: 'That's Not Manly'
Ramzan Kadyrov, center, accompanies Russian President Vladimir Putin at the Russian Special Forces University in Gudermes, Chechen Republic, on Aug. 20.   (Alexei Danichev, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP)

A Chechen warlord was pleased with the battlefield performance of his Tesla Cybertruck, which he had outfitted with an aftermarket machine gun turret, and bragged on it last month. Ramzan Kadyrov said the reason the vehicle had to be towed off the front lines wasn't mechanical failure; he wrote on Telegram that Tesla owner Elon Musk had it remotely disabled, Politico Europe reports. Kadyrov took it hard. "That's not manly," he posted, adding, "How could you do that, Elon?"

Kadyrov had said the vehicle was a gift from Musk, which the billionaire forcefully denied, per Business Insider. "Elon Musk behaved badly. He gives expensive gifts from the bottom of his heart and then remotely disconnects them," Kadyrov wrote on Telegram. Exporting the Cybertruck directly from the US to Chechnya is illegal because of sanctions, experts said, so Kadyrov probably would have had to buy it through a third country. The warlord, a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin whose government has been accused of human rights abuses and international law violations, also had said the Cybertruck would be deployed in Ukraine for Russian troops to use in the fighting.

He said the Cybertruck "coped well" in combat, though military experts have doubts about the usefulness of a 6,800-pound vehicle that needs to be plugged in every 320 miles. "Where do you recharge this thing on the battlefield?" wondered Mark Cancian of the International Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "There are no Tesla outlets on the front lines in the Donbas." (More Cybertruck stories.)

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