A senior Russian official said out loud what Russia's missiles do every night. Pyotr Tolstoy, deputy chairman of the State Duma and great-great-grandson of Russian writer Lev Tolstoy, has called for massed bombing of Ukrainian cities to break the resistance of the people living in them and force a surrender, the news outlet 24 Kanal reported.
Russia denies striking civilians and claims after each attack that it hit military targets, even as its missiles land on homes, hospitals, power plants, and food depots. Ukraine's Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Heorhii Tykhyi said Tolstoy's words should be grounds for an International Criminal Court arrest warrant, calling them a Russian official's demand for war crimes.
What Tolstoy has urged in public, Russian forces have done for more than 12 years while denying it.
The presenter proposed emptying the cities
On the state talk show Vremya Pokazhet, which Tolstoy hosts, he was reminded that more than 20 million people live in Ukraine and asked what would become of them if the country were turned to scorched earth. He proposed warning residents a day before strikes so they could flee their homes.
"You think we are calling for cruelty? We are calling for demoralizing the population so thoroughly that it comes out to meet our troops with its little paws up," Tolstoy said.
Then he named the reason
In the end, Tolstoy described what Ukraine means for Russia's plans.
"[Ukraine] is the kind of territory that will allow us to export our energy resources to Europe by the short route," he said.
He also characterized European leaders in the same speech.
"So gray-haired dwarves from Europe greet them (Ukrainians), and all these notorious Ursulas and Kaja Kallases, do they represent any value to us? No," Tolstoy claimed.
The descendant of a novelist, sanctioned in 2022
Tolstoy trained in France and worked with Le Monde and Agence France-Presse before working with the Russian state television and politics.
The European Union placed him on its sanctions list on 23 February 2022, the day before the full-scale war, naming him a central figure in Russian state propaganda. In 2024, he told the French channel BFMTV that Russian forces would kill French soldiers if they deployed to Ukraine.
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