Russian TV Panelist Cut Off as He Blasts Kremlin's 'Sadism' in Ukraine

A panelist on a recent Russian state-television program was cut off by a host after he criticized Russia's bombing of Ukrainian power plants amid its invasion of the Eastern European country.

In recent weeks, Russia has stepped up attacks on Ukraine's power plants. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a tweet on October 18 that in the prior eight days, Russia had destroyed 30 percent of Ukraine's power stations, "causing massive blackouts across the country."

During the Russian state-television segment, which was posted to Twitter on Saturday by Julia Davis, a columnist for The Daily Beast and founder of the Russian Media Monitor, panelists discussed Russia's recent targeting of Ukraine's power infrastructure. Sociologist Alexei Roschin then began to criticize Russia's actions.

"I don't know what kind of just world order we could be talking about, when we are destroying power plants and the infrastructure in Ukraine," Roschin said.

"You haven't been here for a while. He saved up some stuff in his soul," the host, Andrey Norkin, interjected. "He decided to throw a turd onto the field."

"This is cruelty and sadism, a war against civilians. This is a war against the people," Roschin continued.

Norkin once again interrupted, saying: "You're forcing me to explain everything that was said in our studio in your absence for the last three, four, five years."

"As a citizen, I'm responsible, but I did not approve the bombing of the Ukrainian power plants," Roschin responded.

"Let's pretend we listened to the rest of your manifesto, do you have anything of substance to say?" Norkin asked.

"When this is the kind of thing that we do, the way they feel towards us is clearly understandable," Roschin concluded.

In a separate part of the segment, another panelist, Aleksandr Sytin, a political scientist and historian, said Russia "violated the territorial integrity of a sovereignty nation" when it invaded the country in late February.

Speaking about whether the strikes would force Ukrainians into negotiations with Russian officials, he added: "These borders of a sovereign nation that have been violated, those weren't Russian borders. And that's about it. So far, there aren't any signs that anyone is ready to make a deal with Russia about anything whatsoever."

"What about the piles of would-be intermediaries?" Norkin asked.

"A pile of intermediaries is so far just a pile and no more. For Ukraine, territorial confessions are seen not only as impossible, but as unconscionable," Sytin said, who added that it is "pointless to anticipate that the people of Ukraine would surrender...because they're forced to cook bacon over a candle."

"These are former Soviet people. Geography aside, these former Soviet people have survived the siege of Leningrad. They are filled with hatred. For them it is their Patriotic War. So neither us, nor them could be broken this way," he continued.

The discussions about Russia's destruction of Ukraine's power plants comes as Ukrainian officials have raised concerns that Russian troops could blow up the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP), and potentially trigger a nuclear disaster.

"It is most likely that during the retreat, the enemy may resort to a series of terrorist attacks with the detonation of residential areas, the transformation of temporarily occupied territories into scorched earth, with the task of causing critical damage to the infrastructure," Ukraine Brigadier General Oleksiy Gromov told Ukrainska Pravda on Thursday.