Russian State TV Host Says 'We Are Aggressors and Extremely Evil'

Russian citizens "always come back for what is theirs," a Russian state media host has said, dubbing Moscow's troops the "aggressors" as the grueling war in Ukraine fast approaches its 2-year mark.

The Russian people are "aggressors and extremely evil," Sergey Mardan, said in a clip translated and posted to social media by Anton Gerashchenko, a former adviser to Ukraine's Interior Ministry.

Throughout the war, the Kremlin has framed Ukraine as part of historical Russia. Back in 2021, ahead of Russian forces crossing into Ukraine for Moscow's full-scale invasion, President Vladimir Putin said "Russians and Ukrainians were one people—a single whole."

But Kyiv and many Western analysts describe the war as a fight for survival for Ukraine, with its soldiers battling against cultural erasure.

"They say that we are aggressors and extremely evil, cruel people, and so on," Mardan said, making no distinction between Russian citizens, the military or the government. "I always reply to that: 'Yes, yes, you are right.'"

"Yes, Russians are aggressors; yes, Russians can be cruel and do not forget anything. Russians always come back from what is theirs," Mardan said, according to Gerashchenko's translation.

"Russians don't feel guilty. Russians are not prone to reflection. Russians are engaged in cultural appropriation and don't even understand what it is."

Newsweek has reached out to the Russian Defense Ministry for comment via email.

Putin appeared to double down on this well-worn tactic of justifying his country's invasion of Ukraine in his much-examined interview with former Fox News anchor, Tucker Carlson, earlier this week. "Ukraine is an artificial state," the Russian leader said, according to a Kremlin readout.

"The president of Russia told the Western world as carefully and in detail as possible why there was no Ukraine, there is not and there will not be," former Russian president and current deputy head of the country's security council, Dmitry Medvedev, said in a post to messaging app Telegram.

Russian state media has, throughout the war, amplified similar rhetoric. Mardan, a prominent voice among Kremlin propagandists, has previously claimed being Ukrainian is a "completely deliberate" and political choice.

In a graphic analogy, Mardan then compared claiming Ukrainian identity to "swearing an oath with the devil."

"A person stands in front of the mirror, looks in the mirror, and says, 'I am a Ukrainian.'" Mardan said, according to a translation provided by the Russian Media Monitor project, run by journalist Julia Davis. "He swears some kind of an oath and slits his vein, I don't know all that they do during it."

"You denounce Christ and say, 'Now I am a Ukrainian,'" Mardan said.

"Russia has sought for centuries to sideline and extinguish the Ukrainian language and culture," it has targeted Ukrainian communities within Russia systematically," Rory Finnin, an associate professor of Ukrainian Studies at the University of Cambridge, U.K., told Newsweek in January.