A member of the Duma, for his part, considered that the disappearance of France would not be a tragedy. “France existed, and now it no longer exists, would that bother anyone?”, He launched, without contradiction.
Always further. Accustomed to provocative projections and thinly veiled threats, the guests of Vladimir Soloviev’s program, broadcast on the public channel Rossiya-1, cross all limits.
This Monday, the participants of the day seemed this time extremely upset against France and Emmanuel Macron, who last week promised to send armored vehicles to the Ukrainian army. While the debate focuses on the supposed co-belligerence of the French state in the Ukrainian conflict, Solovyov, chief propagandist of the Kremlin and avowed warmonger, proposed to strike France directly.
“We should wage a preventive war. Macron provides tanks, I would carry out preventive strikes against France as a belligerent,” he said.
“Would anyone mind?”
On the set, his guests, far from calming their host, abound for the most part in the same direction. Among them, Andrey Gurulyov, a retired former general in the Russian army, now a deputy of the Duma, the lower house of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation, goes even further.
“France should not exist. France existed, and now it no longer exists, would that bother anyone?” he begins.
“If we hit France once, it will be the end of all this. Everyone will be afraid, I tell you, no one will want to go to Ukraine. No need to commit our strategic potential, we have enough weapons to destroy France or Great Britain,” adds Gurulyov.
On Twitter, the sequence was taken up and shared by Anton Gerashchenko, official adviser to Volodymyr Zelensky.
“Attention, France!”, he warns, “the propagandists are threatening a preventive strike.”
This is not the first time that this 55-year-old politician has proposed bombing European cities. Last April, already on Russian television but in remarks taken up by the Daily Expressthis same MP had estimated that if a Third World War broke out, then London should be targeted in the first place.
“The first to be affected will be London. It is clear that the threat to the world comes from the Anglo-Saxons,” he threatened.
Common Threats
In general, the guests of Soloviev who threaten European countries with strikes, preventive or not, are legion. At the end of April 2022, the latter did not hesitate to propose using Sarmat missiles – the new Russian ballistic missiles capable of carrying up to 10 nuclear warheads, and razing a country as large as France or the United Kingdom.
Accompanying these threats, a presenter had listed the time it would take for one of these missiles to hit a European city.
“It goes from Kaliningrad to Berlin in 106 seconds. From Kaliningrad to Paris in 200 seconds”, and to London “in 202 seconds”, she explained.
The proliferation of these televised threats is no coincidence. As the outcome of the conflict is increasingly uncertain for the Russian army, these provocative passages will be cut out and translated in the countries concerned. Russian television is well aware of this and uses it to convey various messages to Westerners.
