Russia Today banned and condemned a television presenter who called for the drowning of Ukrainian children on live TV. He now faces investigation by authorities.
Anton Krasovsky, a former vocal LGBT activist and dissident turned pro-government pundit, made the series of inflammatory statements during an interview with author Sergei Lukyanenko on RT, suggesting that Russia should drown Ukrainian children who are hostile to Russia or beat them into huts and set them on fire at a time when Russia is invading Ukraine.
RT’s editor-in-chief, Margarita Simonyan, banned Krasovsky from ever appearing on the station again and issued a condemnation of his statements. Russia’s Investigative Committee, which handles the country’s most serious crimes, announced it had been asked to investigate Krasovsky’s statements, according to the BBC, likely under Russia’s extremism laws.
“It is necessary to straight-up drown these children. A kid said that ‘Muscovites have occupied’ — you immediately throw them into a river with a turbulent current,” Krasovsky said, according to RT. When he got pushback from Lukyanenko, he suggested that Ukrainian children should be beaten into wooden huts, which would then be set on fire. When the author objected, saying he didn’t want to live in a country with those hostile to Russia, Krasovsky suggested executing all Ukrainians who didn’t want to be a part of Russia.
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Soon after airing, Krasovsky’s statements were met with uproar from those in Russia and Ukraine. Simonyan released a statement announcing the presenter’s ban from RT, along with a condemnation of his remarks.
“Anton Krasovsky’s statement is 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, because neither I nor the rest of the RT staff can allow even the thought that one of us is capable of sharing such nonsense,” she wrote. “I’m confused what to say.”
“For the children of Ukraine, as well as the children of Donbass, and all other children, I wish that all this ends as soon as possible, and they can live and study in peace again — in the language they consider native,” she concluded.
For his part, Krasovsky apologized to RT, saying he got carried away, although didn’t apologize to Ukrainians. “Well, it happens: you’re on air, you get carried away. And you can’t stop. I ask for the forgiveness of everyone who was stunned by this,” he wrote on his Telegram channel.
The statements were held by Ukrainians to be an incitement to genocide and led to widespread calls in Ukraine to ban RT worldwide, most notably from Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kubela.
“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!” he wrote.
Krasovsky also faced near-unanimous denunciation from Russian media figures and pundits from a variety of angles. Some claimed that he was a secret Ukrainian or Western agent trying to defame Russia, while others took issue with the fact that he was calling for the death of what they see as Russian children since many Russians see Ukrainians as fellow Russians.
“The man called for the killing of Russian children brainwashed by Ukrainian propaganda. Not to re-educate, but to kill… If he calls for the burning and drowning of… children, the healthy reaction to this should be the same — such people do not have the right to speak on behalf of the Russian state,” popular Russian war reporter Voenkor Kotenok wrote on his Telegram channel. He then suggested that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s office could be paying him to discredit Russia, pointing to Krasovsky’s previous support for Euromaidan.
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Krasovsky could be tried under several articles of Russia’s anti-extremism laws. These ban hate speech and “inciting social discord,” according to the Wilson Center. Russia has cracked down on far-right extremists in the past for hate speech, but prosecuting hate speech against Ukrainians during the war is all but unheard of.
