An online influencer whom Elon Musk frequently boosts on X has been conducting in-person interviews with Russian figures and key allies of Vladimir Putin.
Musk, Donald Trump’s billionaire ally and the owner of X, has consistently reposted and engaged with Mario Nawfal, a Dubai-based Australian influencer who with Musk has given a platform to far-right figures and movements around the world.
Musk shares Nawfal’s posts almost daily, including Nawfal’s promotion and praise of Tesla, Doge and Musk himself. In the two-week span between 23 March and 3 April alone, Musk reposted or quote-tweeted Nawfal 28 times, including posts based on misinformation.
Nawfal founded the kitchen-appliance online store Froothie in 2013, then started a crypto consulting company in 2017. He has 2.1 million followers on X and was reported as one of the fastest-rising stars on Musk’s X platform in 2023 by NBC News.
In recent months, Nawfal has conducted interviews with Putin allies including the Serbian president, Aleksandar Vučić; the Russian minister of foreign affairs, Sergey Lavrov; the Belarusian president, Aleksandr Lukashenko; far-right Russian philosopher Aleksandr Dugin, who is referred to as “Putin’s brain” due to his influence on Russian politics; the Slovakian prime minister, Robert Fico, who has claimed the west has demonized Putin; and the Romanian pro-Russia presidential candidate Cǎlin Georgescu.
“Musk has cultivated, attracts and also welcomes people in all various media who support his views and Nawfal is an example of that,” said Paul Levinson, a professor of communication and media studies at Fordham University.
In Nawfal’s interview with Lukashenko, the Belarusian president praised Trump and blamed the war in Ukraine on the west. Lukashenko has been in power for three decades, winning an election in January 2025 with nearly 88% of the vote. The election has been characterized as a sham by western governments as he has jailed or exiled all opposition dissident leaders.
“He does not just talk about peace. He genuinely wants it. It is almost personal. The most important thing is he wants peace,” Nawfal said at a press conference with state media in Belarus about the interview with Lukashenko, in which they discussed relations between Belarus and the west. “You can trust your president who has been in office for 30 years pursuing a consistent policy.”
Belarusian and Russian governments promoted the interviews with Lavrov and Lukashenko, claiming they were done with a “US blogger”.
Nawfal said this characterization was “factually incorrect and misleading” as he is Australian and lives in Dubai, but did not comment on the Belarusian and Russian governments characterizing and promoting the interviews with the error.
Paul Goode, a Russian studies professor at Carleton University, said it is highly improbable what Lukashenko said was not vetted by the Kremlin, given the country’s close ties with Russia and Putin.
“Russian propaganda frequently uses figures that it claims to represent authentic sentiment in the US in support of its foreign policy claims”, Goode said about Nawfal. “For Russia’s purposes, these kinds of interviews not only provide a platform for recirculating propaganda claims about Russia as a defender of normal states, against western imperialism, globalists in Washington, Nazis in Ukraine, etc … but also provide access to wider audiences in the US and elsewhere through their social media channels.”
Ian Garner, an assistant professor of Russia, war and propaganda at the Pilecki Institute in Warsaw, Poland, noted the level of access these figures give Nawfal.
“They don’t tend to typically give interviews to anyone but friendly media,” he said.
Garner said the blogger sphere that Nawfal inhabits is “very convenient for somebody that is trying to spread propaganda” and to show support between the US right and Russia.
“Ultimately, what all of this is about is propaganda, and it is using a very large online audience that somebody like Nawfal has to be able to speak directly to people all over the world, and in particular, to speak to people in America,” Garner added. “They’re trying to suggest that there is a new sort of spiritual and ideological alignment between the rightwing crowds that are watching Joe Rogan, Tucker Carlson, listening to Nawfal, and the Russian media sphere.”
Nawfal said in an email to the Guardian that the interviews with Putin allies and Russian figures were “broader journalistic initiative to present all sides of key geopolitical issues – including perspectives often excluded from mainstream Western media”.
He said he also interviewed the president of Kosovo, a Nato ally and critic of Putin, and conducted interviews in Ukraine.
“I have received no compensation or material support – financial or otherwise – from any government or foreign entity, including Russia or Belarus,” he told the Guardian.
“The framing of these interviews as ‘propaganda’ is both inaccurate and defamatory. It reflects a broader and dangerous pattern of attempting to discredit independent journalism through baseless insinuation. My work involves publishing direct, unedited conversations with global figures, with the aim of promoting transparency and dialogue across ideological divides. Viewers are free to form their own conclusions.”
Other recent interviews by Nawfal raise similar concerns about propaganda.
On 2 April, Nawfal published an interview with Serbian president Vučić, who claimed recent corruption protests in Serbia were “a mutiny and unrest organized by wealthy and mainly rich people. There are no poor people in the streets.”
In February, Nawfal interviewed Georgescu, Romania’s pro-Russian presidential candidate, touting it as his first interview since Georgescu was detained. Georgescu was banned from participating in a May 2025 rerun election in Romania following evidence of Russian interference in the first round of last year’s presidential election.
Nawfal has previously claimed Georgescu should have been president.
Manuela Caiani, an associate professor of political science at the Scuola Normale Superiore who studies international far-right movements, said Musk and Nawfal play an important role in “an increasing international network of radical right forces not only in Europe, but also all around the globe”.
“The radical right is increasingly becoming connected in terms of ideas, norms, values, initiatives and networking,” Caiani added. “Internalization and mainstreaming go hand in hand, the more they become normalized. It’s about legitimatization.”
