US billionaire Elon Musk held secret talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin during the Ukraine war, when his initial support for Kiev appeared to shift in favor of Moscow, according to the Wall Street Journal reported Thursday, citing several anonymous current and former U.S., European and Russian officials.

The private conversations reportedly covered personal issues as well as business and geopolitical tensions and took place between October 2022 – when he suggested a controversial peace agreement – ​​and “this year”.

A current and former intelligence source were quoted as saying contacts with Putin continued as Musk began increasingly criticizing U.S. military aid to Ukraine and supporting former President Donald Trump's recent candidacy. WSJ noted that Musk's alleged engagement with Putin coincides with Trump's proposal to reach an agreement on the war in Ukraine.

The newspaper also reported that the billionaire was holding regular talks with “senior Russians,” including Putin's first deputy chief of staff Sergei Kiriyenko, while the Kremlin was putting pressure on Musk's business and making “implicit threats against him.”

“They (the US government) don’t love it,” a source was quoted as saying, referring to the reported contacts between Musk and Putin but adding that the Biden administration had not yet issued any warnings about possible security breaches.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told WSJ that Musk and Putin had only one phone call in which they discussed “space and current and future technologies.” The billionaire, who did not respond to the newspaper's request for comment, said in October 2022 that he had spoken to Putin about space in April 2021.

WSJ reported that Putin asked Musk not to activate his Starlink satellite internet service over Taiwan as a favor to Chinese leader Xi Jinping. Starlink does not currently offer service to the island nation.