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The mayor of a Ukrainian city hit by a devastating Russian drone attack over the weekend has used a Tesla vehicle to send an angry message to the firm’s owner Elon Musk.

Having been previously lauded for providing Starlink internet access to the country after Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022, Musk has become an increasingly reviled figure due to his involvement with a Trump administration that has been increasingly antagonistic towards Kyiv and more accommodating to Moscow. Musk has also been accused of echoing Russian propaganda in his posts on his social media site, X.

Borys Filatov, the mayor of Dnipro, the town in which four people were killed in a strike late overnight on Friday, shared an image of himself with a crippled Tesla on his official social media channels.

He captioned the image: “Request to my foreign readers and everyone who has an account in the network "X".”

Referring to recent anti-Tesla protests that have taken place in the US, Europe, and Canada, he added: “Now people in the west do not love the company Tesla and it is trolled in all ways. So please pass this picture to Elon. Because he is such an ardent supporter of the Russians.”

The mass Russian drone attack killed four people, injured 28 and sparked a large fire in a hotel and restaurant complex and other buildings late on Friday in the southeastern Ukrainian city, regional governor Serhiy Lysak confirmed.

A high-rise apartment building and nearly 10 private homes caught fire in the strike that also apparently destroyed the Tesla. Firefighting crews had brought the blaze in the hotel complex under control.