Ukraine hit Moscow with its biggest drone attack since the start of the war. Russian national TV networks all but ignored it.
Russia’s national television networks almost entirely ignored the largest Ukrainian drone attack on the Moscow area since the start of the war. The attack, which took place overnight on May 17, killed three people and wounded 16 more. Several days before the strike, Moscow authorities introduced a ban on publishing photos and videos showing the aftermath of drone strikes, citing the need to prevent “the spread of unreliable information.”
- Channel One, Russia 1, and NTV reported the deaths in the Moscow area only in their Sunday morning broadcasts, which aired several hours after the attack. None of the channels ran a dedicated segment; anchors briefly read out the information over photographs showing apartment buildings damaged by the drones.
- By the afternoon news programs, the attack on the Moscow area had disappeared from coverage entirely. Anchors cited only Defense Ministry summaries listing the total number of drones shot down over Russian territory, with no mention of casualties or damage.
- The attack on Moscow went unmentioned in the evening “analytical” news recap programs. On “Vesti Nedeli,” Dmitry Kiselyov followed a 15-minute segment on the Sarmat missile with a brief rundown — matching the afternoon broadcasts — of drones shot down over Russian regions, including Moscow. The attack on the capital did not appear at all on NTV’s “Itogi Nedeli” or on Channel One’s Sunday program “Vremya.”
- The lead story across all Sunday evening news recap programs was the successful test of the Sarmat missile, which Vladimir Putin had announced several days earlier. Anchors spent 10 to 15 minutes on how the new missiles could be used, including suggestions that factories in Europe producing drones for Ukraine could be targeted. “The Sarmat should underwrite the imminent end of the conflict in Ukraine, where we are already fighting all of Europe, and Europe has lost its fear,” Dmitry Kiselyov said on “Vesti Nedeli.”
- The drone attack on Moscow was actively discussed that evening on “Voskresniy Vecher s Vladimirom Solovyovym” (Sunday Evening with Vladimir Solovyov). Propagandist Margarita Simonyan, a guest on the program, said the goal of the increasingly frequent Ukrainian drone strikes on Russia was to sow division and “civil confrontation” in society. “They can’t wait for people here to start rioting,” she said.
- On Monday, the strike on the Moscow area went unmentioned in both morning and afternoon news programs.
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