Vladimir Putin, speaking alongside Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko during their joint press conference on Tuesday, called the situation in Ukraine “a tragedy,” failing to mention his direct responsibility for initiating the invasion. As always, Russian state media has been playing along, portraying the devastating consequences of Russia’s war of aggression as entirely Ukraine’s fault.
Russian casualties are rarely mentioned by Kremlin-controlled media. “Everything is covered in corpses of Ukrainian soldiers,” said host Vladimir Soloviev during Monday’s broadcast of his show, The Evening With Vladimir Soloviev. There was no condemnation of the cost in human lives wrought by their leader’s unprovoked war of aggression.
Instead, state media is aghast over a recently released shock video, in which an actress threatens Russian invaders with certain death. Though they appear unperturbed by the scenes of carnage out of Bucha or Mariupol, or the bombings of peaceful Ukrainian cities, the Kremlin’s propagandists were triggered by a fictitious portrayal of revenge against an actor playing the part of a Russian occupant.
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In the video, the actress—dressed in an embroidered gown and a national Ukrainian headdress—threatens invading troops with retaliation for the deaths of war victims in Bucha, Irpin, Kyiv, Kharkiv, Odessa and Mariupol. She predicts they would never return home to Russia, and makes a hand motion pretending to slit the throat of a male actor with a sickle, off-camera.
The clip sent shockwaves throughout Russian airwaves.
“This video proves that Ukraine is the new ISIS,” Soloviev exclaimed, leaving out the fact that ISIS videos graphically show real killings and not mere reenactments.
On Monday, Olga Kovitidi, member of the Federation Council Committee on Constitutional Legislation and State Building, told the newspaper Izvestia that the clip is “demonic.” She claimed that “Ukraine has become a toxic state,” and added that “the video once again confirms the correctness of the special military operation carried out by Russia.” In an incredible display of gaslighting, Kovitidi used a reaction to Russia’s brutal invasion as justification for starting the war.
Dmitry Polyansky, Russia’s First Deputy Permanent Representative to the UN, used the same warped logic during a recent meeting of the UN Security Council. He argued that the video retroactively justified Russia’s war. “It is sad that Ukraine has come down to unbridled cruelty, to blind, not lagging behind ISIS radicalism and extremism. Seeing this, you only become convinced of the need and no alternative to the special military operation carried out by Russia,” Polyansky asserted.
The clip was obsessively aired by state TV show 60 Minutes in its entirety on Monday. “Animalistic cruelty is becoming the norm,” complained state TV host Evgeny Popov. He added: “Blind hatred is being promoted to incite average people. The methods of ISIS head-cutters organically fit in with Ukrainian politics. Somebody decided that this kind of bigotry will improve morale... There are now much fewer of those who still didn’t understand what ‘de-nazification’ stands for and why it’s needed.”
Indeed, Popov’s wife and co-host Olga Skabeeva has previously described the process of “de-nazification” as liquidation that might be done by beheading—or, as she put it, “knocking heads off”—during another broadcast of 60 Minutes. She echoed the statements of State Duma member and chairman of Russia's nationalist Rodina party Aleksey Zhuravlyov, who also said during a discussion on the same show that “de-nazification” should be conducted by shootings or beheadings. He, too, was present in the studio on Monday, expressing outrage at the video—but not the real violence unfolding in Ukraine.
Despite state TV propagandists’ own bloodlust, the Ukrainian star of the video, Andrianna Kurylets, was immediately targeted for retaliation. “Simply incredible. They’re looking for the producers of this insane clip. People have lost their minds,” Popov said, adding that the producers “need to be punished” after claiming that the clip was “funded by Ukrainian organizations from New Jersey.”
Popov stated that a criminal case was opened against Kurylets in Russia. “She is from Lviv, so we’ll have to march on Lviv... To find her, we’ll have to go to Lviv,” Popov said. Zhuravlyov beamed with excitement, adding: “That is the end of her.”
The state media pundit was quick to declare that Kurylets, who has since shut down her social media accounts, “should be scared. She will now have to run all over the planet to avoid being found… she is no longer a human… Or is she thinking she won’t have to be held responsible? She will, she certainly will.”
