The Russian autocrat continued his gushing praise for the tech billionaire with eyebrow-raising remarks to university students.

Elon Musk just received a ringing endorsement, but the source — Russian President Vladimir Putin — might raise some eyebrows.

In comments apparently delivered to university students and published Wednesday by Russian state media outlet TASS, Putin praised Musk and compared him to Sergei Korolev, who’s known as the “father” of the former Soviet Union’s space program.

According to the Russian news agency’s translation, Putin said:

You know, there’s a man — he lives in the States — Musk, who, one might say, raves about Mars. It is not often that such people, charged with a certain idea, appear in the human population. If even it seems incredible to me today, after a while such ideas often materialize. Just like in their time the ideas of Korolev, our other pioneers, got to materialize. They seemed incredible — some of the plans they made. But they all materialized. A mission to Mars would be very hard. It now seems very difficult to implement. If you take an interest in this, you probably know.

And so continues, apparently, the oddly cordial relationship between Putin, an enemy of democracy — in his country and ours —and Musk, the uber-rich financier doing his own part to chip away at our democratic processes.

The Russian autocrat has previously praised Musk, saying through a translator that there’s “no stopping” him from doing “as he sees fit.” And last year, The Wall Street Journal reported that Musk and Putin had been in regular contact with one another since late 2022 — the year Putin launched his invasion of Ukraine — with the two reportedly discussing geopolitics, business and personal matters. NBC News confirmed the report, while Musk posted derisively on X without making an explicit denial.

Of course, Musk’s promotion of pro-Kremlin propaganda claiming that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy doesn’t actually want a peace deal with Russia is the dark cloud looming over this seemingly friendly pair. And his refusal to allow Ukraine to launch a drone attack on Russia using his Starlink internet service has worried Pentagon officials, as well.

The most innocent reading of Putin’s latest praise for Musk — and his likening of him to the father of the Soviet space program — is that Putin is simply a techie, a nerd geeking out over Musk’s exploratory spirit.

But Putin is one of the most menacing and malicious figures in all of global politics, and his ongoing affection for Musk warrants questions about what ulterior motives he may have.