Ukraine calls for countries to ban Russia’s RT over ‘aggressive genocide incitement’ 

Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba on Sunday called for global governments to ban Russia’s state-controlled broadcaster RT after a presenter suggested drowning Ukrainian children.

Kuleba shared a recent clip of RT presenter Anton Krasovsky making crude comments about Ukrainian grandmothers being raped by Russian soldiers and saying that Ukrainians should be killed for resisting Russia, according to translations. 

After a guest commented that some Ukrainian children had seen Russians as occupiers during the 1980s, before Ukraine secured independence from the Soviet Union, Krasovsky suggested that those children should have been “thrown straight into a river with a strong current.”

Kuleba still seized on the remarks to urge countries to ban the broadcaster.

“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!” Kuleba said on Twitter. 

RT’s editor-in-chief Margarita Simonyan suspended Krasovsky for his comments, saying in a Telegram post that his comments were “wild and disgusting,” according to translations.  

Krasovsky, a top commentator on RT before his suspension, posted an apology on his Telegram channel shortly after Simonyan’s announcement.