Ukraine calls for a global ban on Russia’s RT after the host called for Ukrainian children to drown According to Reuters

(Reuters) – Ukraine branded Russian state-controlled media outlet RT as inciting genocide on Sunday after a presenter said Ukrainian children viewed Russians as occupiers under the rule of law. The Soviet Union should have drowned.

In a program that aired last week, RT host Anton Krasovsky said children who criticized Russia should have been “thrown into the river with strong currents”.

Krasovsky – a pro-war commentator on Russian television who has been sanctioned by the European Union – responded to an account by Russian science fiction author Sergei Lukyanenko about how when he visited Ukraine for the first time in the 1980s, children told him they would be better off living not that Moscow was occupying their country.

Krasovsky said: “They should have drowned in the Tysyna (river). “Just drown those kids, drown them.” Alternatively, he said, they could be pushed into the huts and set on fire.

In a short clip of the interview shared on social media, Krasovsky also laughed at reports that Russian soldiers raped elderly Ukrainian women during the invasion.

“Governments have not yet banned RT from viewing this excerpt,” Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said in a tweet regarding a clip of the interview.

“Inciting aggressive genocide (we’re going to put this person on trial for it), has nothing to do with freedom of speech. Ban RT worldwide,” added Kuleba.

Russian state television, tightly controlled by the Kremlin, has voiced support for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Presenters regularly refuted reports of Russian war crimes, and many used the airtime to call on Russian President Vladimir Putin to adopt an even more drastic approach to The invasion.

The Kremlin denies its forces committed war crimes in Ukraine.