>Putin Calls Elon Musk a “Trojan Horse”
No way. He's just a regular guy that went rocket shopping. Come on man, who hasn't?
But still rocket-less in 2001, Musk and his partners Adeo Ressi and Jim Cantrell first went rocket shopping in Paris, where they sought to buy rockets from the European space company Arianespace. But the European rockets were too expensive. During the meeting, however, they got word that the Russians wanted to unload some repurposed ICBMs, so Musk and company flew east.
Ressi recounted the “Wild West”-like experience to Esquire in 2012. After paying off some corrupt cops on the road to their meeting, Musk’s rocket-buying team arrived at the Russian rocket negotiations, which entailed a lot of vodka quaffing:
https://www.inverse.com/article/34976-spacex-ceo-elon-musk-tried-to-buy-icbm-rockets-from-russia