Margarita Simonyan, the chief editor at RT, says the TV channel “suspends the working relationship” with Anton Krasovsky after his calls to “drown and burn” Ukrainian children who believe Ukraine is occupied by Russia, Simonyan wrote on her Telegram.
“Krasovsky’s rhetoric is ridiculous and disgusting. Perhaps he will explain himself, making it clear how this could come out of his mouth. It’s hard to believe Krasovsky really thinks that children should be drowned,” Simonyan wrote.
She also added that neither she nor the rest of the staff should not let anyone think that “some of us may be supporting such insanity.” “We’re bewildered. I wish to the children of Ukraine, same as the children of Donbas, to have all this over as soon as possible, and I wish they could get back to school, taught in any language they consider their native,” she said.
Alexander Bastrykin, the head of Russia’s Investigative Committee, has ordered that Krasovsky’s words be investigated.
Krasovsky is the head of RT's Russian-language programmes. During his interview with Sergey Lukyanenko, an author, he suggested that Ukrainian children be drowned after Lukyanenko’s story of how he was in hospital in west Ukraine in 1980 where the local children told him that “Ukraine was occupied by Moskals [a Ukrainian ethnic slur for Russians].” “We need to burn such kids. This is how we do it! If they say the Moskals occupied them, they should be thrown in a fast flowing river,” Krasovsky said. Lukyanenko responded that “rod punishments” should be used instead, to which Krasovsky said the children may as well be “burned.”
After Simonyan’s statement Krasovsky said that he was “truly uncomfortable” since he could not see “the red line.” “Speaking about those children: this happens sometimes when you go live and get sort of carried away, and you can’t stop. I apologise before everyone who was shocked by this, before Margarita and anyone else who found it ridiculous and unthinkable. I hope you will forgive me,” he wrote.
Ukraine’s Office of Prosecutor General launched a criminal procedure against Krasovsky in June for calling to genocide. As the agency said, “he “called for the physical termination of a part of the Ukrainian people, set the Russian audience against Ukrainians, suggested that the contradictions between Russia and Ukraine might be resolved with the use of violence” and “called to overthrow the constitutional order in Ukraine and put its statehood out of existence.”
