Anton Krassowski has stood for hate propaganda on the Russian broadcaster RT for years. With a statement he now goes too far even for the Kremlin.
The Kremlin repeatedly uses shocking hate propaganda – the Russian-language broadcaster RT repeats Putin’s fascist narrative. But one man does too much propaganda even for Keml: Anton Krassowski.
In a live broadcast, the head of RT’s Russian-language program suggested drowning or burning alive Ukrainian children who didn’t want to live under Russian rule. On Monday, RT Editor-in-Chief Margarita Simonyan declared that the collaboration with Anton Krassowski had been discontinued – but she withdrew this a little later.
Now even the public prosecutor’s office is to investigate the RT boss, reports the “Stern”.
The 47-year-old Russian-born TV journalist has been the head of the Russian-language program RT since 2020. In 2013, Krassowski came out as homosexual. Krassowski makes no secret of his positive HIV status. He caused offense early in his career: he was fired from “Vogue” because of his bad behavior within the team. His clear hate object: Ukrainians.
Only in the most recent issue of the program “Antonym” did Krassovsky, together with science fiction author Sergei Lukyanenko, complain that not only ethnic Ukrainians but also Russians living in Ukraine identify with the Ukrainian state.
Krassowski also asked a studio guest: “Should Ukraine stay on the world map at all” and got the answer: “I think so. Because there will definitely be enough people left there with whom I don’t want to live in a common state”, so Lukyanenko. Krassowski then makes a violent statement: “Well, then we’ll shoot them.”
Lukyanenko seems to have painful memories of Ukraine: the author tells TV journalist Krassovsky about his trips to Ukraine in the 1980s. He had to hear from Ukrainian children that Ukraine was occupied by the “Moskali”. The term is meant to be a derogatory term for Russians. According to Lukyanenko, the children would have said that if it weren’t for the Russians, the Ukrainians could have lived like the French.
Krassowski then reacted with a horrible statement: “These children should have been drowned directly! Drown these children! (…) Drown,” he shouted. The term ‘Moskali’ seems to particularly upset the TV journalist: “If someone just talks about being occupied by the ‘Moskali’, they throw him straight into a river with a raging current,” says Krassowski.
The TV journalist doesn’t want to stop with the bloodthirsty statements. He goes on to say that the children should be “locked up in their huts and burned”.
And the TV journalist uses even more atrocities in the show. He jokes about rapes: “Old women would give their last penny for Russian soldiers to rape them,” says Krassowski. He also jokes that Russian soldiers can brag: “Today I raped 14 80-year-old Ukrainian women.”
But even for the Kremlin, Krassovsky’s statements about drowning children or burning them alive go too far. The head of Russia’s investigative committee, Alexander Bastrykin, is said to have instructed the public prosecutor’s office to investigate Krassovsky’s statements, reports Stern. Duma deputy Dmitry Savelyev is said to have demanded that Krasovsky be “arrested as soon as possible and sentenced according to the strictest of laws”.
The European Union also blacklisted him in February in connection with the Russian war of aggression in Ukraine. The reason for this is his anti-Ukrainian propaganda.
