Fury as director of Russia’s state-funded TV network RT suggests Ukrainian children should be drowned or burned – sparking station’s own editor-in-chief to condemn his comments as ‘wild and disgusting’
- A Russia Today director has been suspended by the state-owned broadcaster
- Anton Krasovsky, 47, said he would drown Ukrainian children and burn them alive
- RT’s Editor-in-Chief, Margarita Simonovna Simonyan, called it ‘wild and disgusting’.
- Ukrainian Foreign Minister, Dmytro Kuleba, has since called for a global ban on RT
A Russia Today director has sparked fury after making disturbing comments calling for the genocide of Ukrainians and saying he would drown children.
Anton Krasovsky, 47, has since been suspended by the Kremlin-backed channel, a move commentators have described as ‘too little too late’ as anti-Ukrainian rhetoric in Russia escalates and becomes increasingly violent.
The Director of Broadcasting has made vile comments previously and is considered extreme even amongst supporters of Putin’s war.
Krasovsky, who is a senior journalist at RT, made the comments during an interview with Sergei Lukyanenko, a Russian sci-fi author who also holds aggressively anti-Ukrainian views.
In the horrifying footage of the interview, Krasovsky makes a series of statements suggesting he would kill the Ukrainian children and uses an offensive slur throughout.
Krasovsky made the comments in response to Lukyanenko’s account about how, when he first visited Ukraine in the 1980s, children told him they would live better lives were it not for Moscow occupying their country.
‘They should have been drowned in the river, right there where the duckling swims.
‘Just drown those children, drown them in the Tysyna (river),’ he says. ‘You throw them in the river with a strong undercurrent.’
In the horrifying footage of the interview, Anton Krasovsky makes a series of statements suggesting he would kill the Ukrainian children and uses an offensive slur throughout
As he speaks, Krasovsky can be seen lifting his fist and mimicking how he would drown children.
‘That’s not your method, you sci-fi writers are intelligent people, but it is our method’, he tells Lukyanenko with a smirk.
He later says – with a grin on his face – that all Ukrainians should be killed, and that he would burn them alive in their homes and shoot them.
Krasovsky, who is a senior journalist at RT, made the comments during an interview with Sergei Lukyanenko, a Russian sci-fi author who also holds aggressively anti-Ukrainian views
Krasovsky makes other violent threats throughout the rest of the interview, including saying that Ukraine is ‘not supposed to exist at all’ before asking ‘should Ukraine remain on the map of the world at all’.
In a short segment of the interview, shared on social media, Krasovsky also laughed at reports that Russian soldiers had raped elderly Ukrainian women during the invasion.
Following extensive backlash, RT suspended the TV host.
The channel’s Editor-in-Chief, Margarita Simonovna Simonyan, described his statement as ‘wild and disgusting’.
‘Perhaps Anton will explain what kind of temporary insanity it was caused and how it broke from his tongue.
‘It is hard to believe that Krasovsky sincerely believed that children should be drowned.
‘For now, I’m stopping our collaboration, as neither I nor the rest of the RT team can afford to even think that any of us are capable of sharing such a game. I’m confused what to say.
‘For the children of Ukraine, as well as for the children of Donbass, and for all other children, I wish that all this ends as soon as possible, and that they can live and study in peace again – in the language they consider native.’
Ukrainian Foreign Minister, Dmytro Kuleba, has since called for a global ban on RT.
He said on Twitter: ‘Governments which still have not banned RT must watch this excerpt.
‘This is what you side with if you allow RT to operate in your countries.
‘Aggressive genocide incitement (we will put this person on trial for it), which has nothing to do with freedom of speech. Ban RT worldwide!’
Responding to Krasovsky’s suspension, the BBC’s Sarah Rainsford said that his comments are ‘just the tip of the iceberg’ and that ‘hate speech is the now the norm on Russian state-TV when it comes to Ukraine’.
Russian media continues to bombard people with anti-Ukrainian messaging, with analysts warning hatred against Ukrainians in Russia could be embedded for generations.
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