'I hereby challenge Vladimir Putin to single combat': Elon Musk says he wants to fight Russian strongman for Ukraine in bizarre tweetstorm filled with Shakespeare reference and memes about invasion

Tesla founder Elon Musk has challenged Russian President Vladimir Putin to a fight over Ukraine in an early morning Twitter dump that included memes about the invasion and references to Macbeth.

'I hereby challenge Vladimir Putin to single combat,' Musk tweeted Monday, typing Putin's name in Russian. 'Stakes are Ukraine,' he added, writing the country's name in Ukrainian.

Musk, 50, capped off his challenge with a direct reference to the Kremlin.

'Do you agree to this fight?' he wrote, tagging the Kremlin's official Twitter account.

The South African-born billionaire, who has been known for making outlandish comments on twitter in the past, may be biting off more than he can handle in challenging the former head of the KGB.

The Russian president is a judo blackbelt and even co-authored a book about the sport, titled ‘Judo: History, Theory, Practice’.

Putin, 69, was made honorary president of the International Judo Federation in 2008, but has been suspended from the role over his war on Ukraine.

Musk's bizarre challenge was part of a flurry of tweets he sent out over the course of three hours, including the oft-quoted Shakespeare line from Macbeth: 'By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes.'

In another tweet, he posted a meme of a character from the Netflix show Narcos sitting on a porch swing that reads, 'Netflix waiting for the war to end to make a movie about a black ukraine guy falls in love with a transgender russian soldier.'

Earlier on Monday, he also posted the cryptic message, 'There is a beauty to the biological substrate.'

Musk has tried to be a thorn in Putin's side since the unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, even providing internet service to the war-torn country through his Starlink satellite service at the request of Ukrainian officials.

Musk, worth a reported $218.9 billion, mocked Russian officials earlier this month after the head of its space program brushed off US sanctions on Moscow for launching all-out war on Ukraine.