A presenter on Russian state-controlled RT media said Ukrainian children who saw Russians as occupiers during Soviet rule should have been drowned.
In a show broadcast last week, RT presenter Anton Krasovsky said children who criticized Russia should have been “thrown straight into a river with a strong current.”
Krasovsky — a pro-war commentator who has been sanctioned by the European Union — was responding to an account by Russian science fiction author Sergei Lukyanenko 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 Tysyna (River),” Krasovsky said in response. “Just drown those children, drown them.” Alternatively, he said, they could be shoved into huts and burned.”
In a short segment of the interview, which was shared on social media, Krasovsky also laughed at reports that Russian soldiers had raped elderly Ukrainian women during the invasion.
Krasovsky’s comment sparked outrage in Ukraine and the West, feeding allegations that Russia is intent on eradicating Ukrainians as a race.
“Governments which have still not banned RT must watch this excerpt,” Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said in a tweet that linked to a clip of the interview.
“Aggressive genocide incitement (we will put this person on trial for it), which has nothing to do with freedom of speech. Ban RT worldwide,” Kuleba added.
Krasovsky gained some Western recognition when he announced live on Russian TV in 2013 that he was gay to protest against Kremlin-backed legislation imposing harsh fines and jail terms for the distribution of homosexual “propaganda” to minors.
Krasovsky’s public announcement brought his soaring career as a Russian television journalist to a temporary end as he was barred from state media.
In stark contrast to his comments regarding Ukrainians last week, in 2013 — when a 22-year-old man from the southern Russian town of Volgograd was brutally murdered by neighbors for being gay — Krasovsky penned an opinion piece in The Guardian criticizing the Kremlin for targeting a select group of people.
“How did it come about that today in Russia a good gay person is a dead gay person? …As far as the [Russian] deputies are concerned I am scum by the fact of my birth, and it was criminal negligence not to have made a note of that in my birth certificate. What seemed like a bad dream only a couple of years ago has now become reality. And it is terrifying to imagine what could happen tomorrow,” he wrote.
Source : Radio Free Europe Radio Liberty