During a TV appearance, Margarita Simonyan, head of the Russian propaganda channel RT, suddenly spoke of a civil war in Ukraine and no longer – as usual – of a special operation. Particularly explosive: Shortly before she met Putin personally.
“It is clear to everyone that there is no war in Ukraine. There’s not even a special operation. There is a civil war in Ukraine.” These words come from Margarita Simonyan, editor-in-chief of the Russian media company RT (formerly Russia Today). They fell during a television appearance on Sunday night.
Shortly before, Simonyan moderated Russia’s most important economic event, the International Economic Forum in St. Petersburg, and also personally interviewed the President on stage. “For us, she is the best presenter in the world,” enthused Dmitry Peskov, Vladimir Putin’s press secretary.
Simonyan, who is considered the Kremlin’s chief propagandist, met with Putin both before and after the weekend’s economic event. She said so herself in a political program on RT. The US news site “The Daily Beast” also reports on this. When the host of the show asked Simonyan for details about the meeting, Simonyan grinned: “Of course I can’t tell all this publicly, I’ll whisper it in your ear later.”
In the same program, Simonyan also spoke of a civil war in Ukraine – and no longer of a special operation. “Part of the Ukrainians who are anti-Russian and anti-Russian, like the fascists were anti-Semitic – that is, absolutely the same – are destroying another part of their own people,” the journalist said. “Russia only supports one side of these warring factions,” she said. “These are our people. And over there they are anti-Russians. That’s all.”
Putin would not allow himself to be looked at in all of this, the journalist raved. Simonyan further claimed that, for practical reasons, Putin had not attacked major Ukrainian cities more successfully. “Would we want to turn these cities into Stalingrad?” she quoted the Russian President from her conversation with him. “Indeed, our people are there. These are our future cities! This is our land and our people, we will have to restore it later.”
During her performance, Simonyan not only advocated the killing of Ukrainians who resisted the Russian invasion, but also refused to recognize their existence as a people. At the beginning of her monologue, the editor-in-chief also praised Putin’s good health and tireless perseverance. Again and again there is speculation about Putin’s state of health.
Simonyan recently attracted attention again and again with abstruse statements. In May she said she thought the use of nuclear weapons was more likely than World War III. “Knowing our leader Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, there is no chance that he will give up,” she said on state television.
