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As you may recall, last week Elon Musk suddenly started tweeting about peace in Ukraine. His proposal had some specifics.

And if peace was the carrot, Musk argued nuclear war was the stick if we failed to adopt a plan like his soon.

One former Ukrainian ambassador responded to Musk’s proposal with a terse “F**k off.” President Zelensky was a bit more clever, running his own poll:

In any case, many people noted that Musk’s proposal sounded a lot like a statement of Russian demands, i.e. they keep everything they have seized. Today, Vice is reporting that according to Ian Bremmer, Musk spoke to Putin before offering his suggestions.

In a mailout sent to Eurasia Group subscribers, Ian Bremmer wrote that Tesla CEO Musk told him that Putin was “prepared to negotiate,” but only if Crimea remained Russian, if Ukraine accepted a form of permanent neutrality, and Ukraine recognised Russia’s annexation of Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia.

According to Bremmer, Musk said Putin told him these goals would be accomplished “no matter what,” including the potential of a nuclear strike if Ukraine invaded Crimea, which Russia annexed in 2014. Bremmer wrote that Musk told him that “everything needed to be done to avoid that outcome.”

Is this true? Well, Musk said earlier this month that he’d spoken to Putin last year.

That tweet came a couple of days after Musk’s peace proposal. That annexation mentioned in his proposal only happened recently (it was being voted on the same day Musk proposed his peace plan) so Musk must have omitted another, more recent conversation with Putin than the videoconference last year. I checked Twitter as I was writing this and so far Musk hasn’t confirmed or denied the report. Neither has Ian Bremmer. If Musk is relaying information from Putin, he should say so. It sheds a different light on the nature of his peace proposal.

Assuming the story is true, Putin’s claim that his goals would be accomplished “no matter what” seems a bit at odds with reality. The entire invasion has been a long series of failures and fallbacks for Putin. He clearly thought he could annex all of Ukraine and that failed. Then he thought he could gradually win the war and that has failed. Now he seems to be settling for four annexed areas but admits the borders are changing as Ukraine seizes territory.

Really, the only way to read Putin’s statement is as a threat of nuclear war, since nukes are the only real guarantee of victory Putin seems to have. It sounds like he convinced Musk that nuclear war was inevitable to ensure he gets his way. That’s probably why Musk is proposing a plan that mostly sounds like Russia’s demands.

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But giving in to threats of nuclear terrorism seems like a very poor way to make decisions. If this works once, what’s to prevent Putin from repeating this in Georgia or Latvia or Finland? Once we’ve established that Putin can back down the whole western world by making threats, why would anyone assume he’ll stop with 20% of Ukraine?

There are other states with nuclear weapons (North Korea, China and one day Iran) who might decide to start making their own demands or else. Do we really want to set a precedent of making territorial concessions in response to nuclear threats?

Granted, there’s really no good game plan for dealing with a nuclear madman. Refusing to give in to his demands is risky but giving in to his demands is also risky as it ensures there will be more demands and likely more nuclear madmen to deal with in the future.

Finally, I’ll wrap this up with this clip from Julia Davis who runs the Russian Media Monitor. This is sort of what all the Russian offers boil down to, i.e. we come as friends but if you don’t listen to us we’ll kill millions of you or maybe just all of you. That’s sort of what Putin’s nuclear threats are saying too.

Update: Here’s Musk’s denial that he has spoken to Putin since the one time mentioned above (last year).

So where is Ian Bremmer getting this then?

Update: Looks like we’re starting another round of stupid Logan Act commentary.

Update: This is getting a bit heated. Ian Bremmer has doubled down on his claim that Musk spoke to Putin. But as you can see, Musk is directly contradicting him.

Is there a way to split this difference?

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