UK drops X as Musk-funded Robinson Russia trip revealed

The UK Department for Culture, Media and Sport is dropping X after it emerged that Elon Musk’s family foundation funded a trip to Moscow by far-right activist Tommy Robinson. British police stopped Robinson and seized his phones upon his return after he used the visit to call for street demonstrations and praise the Russian state.

Errol Musk, Elon Musk’s father, told the Guardian: “I brought him out to Russia,” adding that the Musk Foundation covered the travel costs. During the trip, Robinson appeared in a luxury Moscow hotel with Errol Musk and attended meetings with Russian business figures focused on the country's declining birth rate. Errol Musk also attended a Kremlin-backed economic forum in St Petersburg.

The visit highlights a widening pattern of the Kremlin courting European far-right figures to destabilise the continent. While Robinson was in Moscow, the influencer Andrew Tate was also filmed firing weapons alongside apparent Russian military personnel. For European policymakers, the incident demonstrates how domestic extremists are being leveraged by hostile states to fracture social cohesion.

The involvement of the Musk Foundation has shifted the political debate toward the role of US tech platforms in European public life. Ed Davey, the Liberal Democrat leader, said: “Tommy Robinson is a useful idiot for a hostile state. What kind of so-called British patriot jets to Moscow to rub shoulders with Putin’s cronies, bankrolled by a US trillionaire?”

Davey added: “We must protect our democracy from far-right thugs, shady tech bros and foreign interference.” The UK government's decision to leave X marks a significant institutional rejection of a major social media platform. The culture department stated it was dropping the service because it “now favours abuse and misinformation over meaningful debate.”

Liberal Democrat MP Luke Taylor said: “Elon Musk is hostile to British values and we must break our addiction to his hateful algorithm.” Security experts warn that regulating such interference is increasingly complex when it originates from ostensibly allied nations.

Matthew Ford, an associate professor at the Swedish Defence University, wrote: “The owner of X and friend of the president of our No 1 ally pays to send an extremist English nationalist to Russia to collude against British democracy.” He questioned how new policies could stop “ostensibly friendly foreign actors from subverting British democracy without appearing to validate the free-speech arguments they weaponise to resist regulation.”