A presenter on Russian state-controlled RT media has been suspended after he said Ukrainian children who saw Russians as occupiers under the Soviet Union should have been drowned.
"For now, I'm stopping our collaboration as neither I nor the rest of the RT team can afford to even think that any of us are capable of sharing such a view," the broadcaster’s editor in chief, Margarita Simonyan, tweeted late on October 23 in announcing the suspension of presenter Anton Krasovsky.
Live Briefing: Russia's Invasion Of Ukraine
RFE/RL's Live Briefing gives you all of the latest developments on Russia's full-scale invasion, Kyiv's counteroffensive, Western military aid, global reaction, and the plight of civilians. For all of RFE/RL's coverage of the war in Ukraine, click here.
In a show broadcast last week, RT presenter Anton Krasovsky said children who criticized Russia should have been "thrown straight into a river with a strong current."
Krasovsky -- a pro-war commentator who has been sanctioned by the European Union -- was responding to an account by Russian science fiction author Sergei Lukyanenko about how, when he first visited Ukraine in the 1980s, children told him they would live better lives were it not for Moscow occupying their country.
"They should have been drowned in the Tysyna (River)," Krasovsky said in response. "Just drown those children, drown them." Alternatively, he said, "they could be shoved into huts and burned.”
In a short segment of the interview, which was shared on social media, Krasovsky also laughed at reports that Russian soldiers had raped elderly Ukrainian women during the invasion.
"Anton Krasovsky's statement is wild and disgusting.... It is hard to believe that Krasovsky sincerely believed that children should be drowned," Simonyan added.
Krasovsky's comment also sparked outrage in Ukraine and the West, feeding allegations that Russia is intent on eradicating Ukrainians on the whole.
"Governments which have still not banned RT must watch this excerpt," Ukraine's Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said in a tweet that linked to a clip of the interview.
"Aggressive genocide incitement (we will put this person on trial for it), which has nothing to do with freedom of speech. Ban RT worldwide," Kuleba said. "This is what you side with if you allow RT to operate in your countries."
Early on October 24, Krasovsky apologized for the comments, saying he was "embarrassed" by them.
WATCH: Anton Krasovsky's soaring career as a Russian television journalist came to an abrupt end in 2013, when he announced live on air that he was gay. Now barred from Russian screens, Krasovsky has nonetheless chosen to stay in Russia -- a society he says is doomed to ruin. (Originally published in 2015)
Krasovsky gained some Western recognition when he announced live on Russian TV in 2013 that he was gay to protest against Kremlin-backed legislation imposing harsh fines and jail terms for the distribution of homosexual "propaganda" to minors.
Krasovsky’s public announcement brought his soaring career as a Russian television journalist to a temporary end as he was barred from state media. He returned as a presenter for the Russian state-controlled broadcaster in 2020.
In stark contrast to his comments regarding Ukrainians last week, in 2013 -- when a 22-year-old man from the southern Russian town of Volgograd was brutally murdered by neighbors for being gay -- Krasovsky penned an opinion piece in The Guardian criticizing the Kremlin for targeting a select group of people.
“How did it come about that today in Russia a good gay person is a dead gay person?.… As far as the [Russian] deputies are concerned I am scum by the fact of my birth, and it was criminal negligence not to have made a note of that in my birth certificate. What seemed like a bad dream only a couple of years ago has now become reality. And it is terrifying to imagine what could happen tomorrow,” he wrote.
With reporting by Reuters
