Anton Krassovski, 47, had urged to “throw” these children “directly into a river with a strong current” or “burn them in a hut”. The presenter of the RT television channel in Russia was later removed from his post. He was responding to an anecdote from a guest on his set who told him about his trip to Ukraine during the time of the USSR in the 1980s and the feeling of certain young Ukrainians of “suffering from the Russian occupation”.
The boss of RT in Russia, Margarita Simonian, quickly condemned these remarks on the night of Sunday to Monday, deeming them “savage” and “disgusting”. “For now, I’m stopping our collaboration,” she said in a statement on Telegram. On Monday morning, she said she wanted to “warn those who call for atrocities”. “There is no need to do that,” she assured.
Anton Krassovski apologized to him on social networks, saying he was “really embarrassed”. Before adding: “I apologize to all those who were stunned by this” and who found these words “wild, unthinkable”. The Russian Investigative Committee, in charge of the main investigations in the country, said Monday that it had demanded “a report” on this incident, following a report from a viewer.
The head of Ukrainian diplomacy, Dmytro Kouleba, called on him on Twitter on Sunday to “ban RT in the world”, describing Anton Krassovski’s intervention as “aggressive incitement to genocide (…), which has nothing to do with with freedom of expression”. This is not the first time that Anton Krassovski has verbally attacked the Ukrainians since the start of the Russian offensive in his neighbor in February. At the end of March, he said in a video on YouTube that he wanted to “destroy their Constitution”, also ensuring that Ukraine “should not exist”.