Tesla and PayPal entrepreneur Elon Musk tweeted:
“I hereby challenge [Vladimir Putin] to single combat,” Musk wrote, using Putin’s Russian name.
“He added, “Stakes are [Ukraine],” using the Ukrainian spelling for Ukraine.
“In Cyrillic script and tagging the Kremlin’s official account, Musk asked, “Do you agree to this fight?”
Absurd? Probably, but it seems like a good idea. Putin likes to portray himself as muscular and accomplished in the martial arts. Don’t know about Musk, but he’s quite a bit taller than Putin.
Emile Zola, in his novel about the Franco-Prussian War (1870-71), aptly titled (in French) Le Débâcle, portrayed a soldier on his way to the battlefield musing thus:
“If Badinguet [satirical sobriquet for Napoleon III] and Bismarck have a quarrel, let them go to work with their fists and fight it out and not involve some hundreds of thousands of men who don’t even know each other by sight and have not the slightest desire to fight.” — Zola: The Downfall, chap. ii. (1892)(translated by E. P. Robins)
Wonder how the Russian soldiers taking this. Ukrainians are fighting for their existence. Either way the war ends, it will be a debacle for both.
