Tesla CEO Elon Musk has been accused by Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov of “remotely disabling” his Cybertruck, which was outfitted with a machine gun and sent to the frontline of Russia’s war in Ukraine.
On Thursday, Kadyrov claimed in a post on Telegram that the vehicle was “performing well in combat,” but later it shut down. This was followed by another post on Friday wherein he stated that two more Tesla Cybertrucks have been sent to the frontline.
Kadyrov, known for his active involvement in Russia’s military operations in neighbouring Ukraine, claimed that the high-tech vehicle had to be towed from the battlefield as it was “remotely” switched off, CNN reported.
“What Elon Musk did was not nice. He gives expensive gifts from the heart and then remotely switches them off,” Kadyrov wrote in Russian.
Kadyrov, the head of the Chechen Republic, said that the Cybertruck was sent to the Northern Military District. While it “coped well” in the combat missions, later it was towed after getting turned off, as per a Benzinga report.
In another post on Friday, he informed that two more Cybertrucks were sent to the “SVO (Ukraine war) zone”. This time, Kadyrov also shared a video of the two Cybertrucks in a forested area, with each of them armed with mounted machine guns. The video features men in military uniforms in the truckbeds.
Kadyrov further claimed that the “remote shutdown” did not affected the two other vehicles, which are “operating normally, without any failures.”
“You couldn’t ask for better advertising for the Cybertruck,” he added.
This comes after the Chechen warlord shared a video of himself driving a Cybertruck in August this year and said that it was a “gift” from Elon Musk. In that video, he was seen driving the vehicle in Grozny, the capital of Chechnya. He even thanked Musk for the Cybertruck and asserted that it will soon be sent to the front.
However, the Tesla CEO denied sending the vehicle to Kadyrov and replied to an X user, “Are you seriously so retarded that you think I donated a Cybertruck to a Russian general? That’s amazing.”
Musk though did not clarify how Kadyrov gained access to the vehicle, which is reported limited to sales within the US so far.
Both Tesla as well as Musk are yet to respond to Ramzan Kadyrov’s latest claims.
The fully electric Tesla Cybertruck was unveiled by Musk in Los Angeles in 2019, with its retail prices starting at around $90,000.
