“Your ‘patriots’ love to criticize America, then come relax in our country,” the former U.S. ambassador to Moscow said.
KIEV, Ukraine — Standing in front of a giant mushroom cloud and making his trademark jazz-hands gestures, Vladimir Putin's propagandist-in-chief fantasized about the imminent nuclear destruction of the United States.
"Russia is the only country in the world that is really capable of turning the U.S. into radioactive ash," said Dmitry Kiselyov, the host of Vesti Nedeli (This Week in News), a weekly current affairs show on state television perhaps best described as a cross between 60 Minutes and the Two Minutes' Hate from George Orwell's 1984. "I don't know if it's a coincidence or not, but Obama's started calling Putin more often — and going gray faster," he continued as the screen showed the trajectories of hundreds of Russian nuclear missiles launching from silos and submarines in the "right direction."
The frothy rants that Kiselyov, 59, delivers against the Kremlin's enemies as he prances and pirouettes around the studio have made him the face (and hands) of Moscow's propaganda machine against the West. The European Union even put him on a sanctions list published Friday for being a "central figure of the government propaganda supporting the deployment of Russian forces in Ukraine."
Kiselyov's own relations with the U.S., however, are more complicated. He may fantasize about the mutually assured destruction of America — but that didn't stop him from participating in a State Department program, former U.S. ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul tweeted early Friday.
