A Ukrainian commander among the fighters besieged by Russian forces at the Azovstal plant in Mariupol on Wednesday appealed directly to American billionaire Elon Musk’s help to intervene to save them.
“People say you came from another planet to teach people to believe in the impossible. (…) Where I live, it is almost impossible to survive,” tweeted Sergei Volina, commander of the 36th Marine Brigade in Mariupol.
“Help us leave Azovstal for a third country. If it’s not you, who else? Give me the lead,” noting that he created a Twitter account specifically to directly challenge the world’s richest man trying to buy the social network for $44 billion.
The soldier asked “everyone on the planet” to help make sure Elon Musk was aware of his attractiveness.
Kyiv said this week that more than 1,000 soldiers, many of them wounded, remain in the bowels of its steel mills that house a sprawling Soviet-era underground maze. It is the only pocket of resistance in the strategic port city of Mariupol, now controlled by the Russians.
Women, children and the elderly were evacuated as part of a humanitarian mission coordinated by the United Nations and the Red Cross.
Elon Musk has 92 million followers on Twitter, his users in Ukraine doubled to get information and find help.
The eccentric billionaire challenged Russian President Vladimir Putin in mid-March in a “man-to-man battle” with Ukraine as the stake.
A shipment of terminals from Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite internet service arrived in Ukraine in early March, to help deliver internet to areas hit by the Russian army that swept the country on February 24.
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