“I am sure that this ‘beast’ will bring a lot of benefit to our fighters.”
From Chechnya With Love
Chechen warlord and Vladimir Putin crony Ramzan Kadyrov has posted a video of himself driving a Cybertruck — with a machine gun mounted to its truck bed, seemingly ready to be deployed to the front lines of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
In a Telegram post, Kadyrov called Tesla CEO Elon Musk “the strongest genius of our time,” a notable endorsement of the mercurial billionaire coming from a leader with a lengthy track record of human rights abuses, including torture and assassinations.
Musk, however, didn’t take kindly to the news, arguing that he had never donated the vehicle to Kadyrov — while also resorting to using a problematic pejorative for somebody with a mental disability.
“Are you seriously so retarded that you think I donated a Cybertruck to a Russian general?” he responded on X.
Kadyrov said he received a Tesla Cybertrack from Elon Musk. He promised to send it to the “special military operation” zone and attached a machine gun to it.
“Elon, thank you! Come to Grozny, I will receive you as the most dear guest! I do not think that our Russian MFA will be… pic.twitter.com/m72fg2G2PU
— Anton Gerashchenko (@Gerashchenko_en) August 17, 2024
Toy Truck
At one point in the video, Kadyrov can be seen draping a massive ammunition belt around his neck while manning the machine gun on the back of the Cybertruck.
“We received a Tesla Cybertruck from the respected Elon Musk,” he wrote in his Telegram post. “I was happy to test the new equipment and personally saw that there’s a reason that it is called the ‘Cyberbeast.'”
But while Kadyrov claimed that he felt “invulnerable” in the vehicle, we’ve already seen that Tesla’s claims about the truck are largely not much more than boisterous marketing. We’ve seen bullets easily penetrate the truck’s allegedly “bulletproof” stainless steel exoskeleton. The “armored” glass can also easily be shattered, even by a routine hailstorm. In short, it’s likely going to fare very badly on the battlefield.
“Based on such excellent characteristics, the Cybertruck will soon be sent to the special military operation zone,” Kadyrov wrote, using Russia’s nebulous euphemism for its unprovoked and unjustified invasion of Ukraine.
“I am sure that this ‘beast’ will bring a lot of benefit to our fighters,” he added.
Meanwhile, Musk whined on X-formerly-Twitter that his claims were somehow proof of “how much the legacy media lies,” even though we have yet to come across a news report that claims Tesla donated the truck to Kadyrov.
Earlier this year, Lithuanian customs agents came across a pair of Cybertrucks that were reportedly on their way to be smuggled into Russia, so it’s entirely possible Kadyrov and his co-perpetrators found illegal ways of getting their hands on the truck.
More on the Cybertruck: Cybertruck Tailgates Are Deforming After Doing Regular Truck Stuff
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