Russian propagandist’s interview sparks debate over whether he deserves sympathy

On April 13, Ksenia Sobchak released an interview with TV host Anton Krasovsky, a figure known for moving from liberal circles into Russia’s conservative camp. Once a recognizable journalist at glossy magazines, he became an aggressive war propagandist and was fired from the Russian state propaganda outlet RT for calling for Ukrainian children to be “drowned” and “burned.” Krasovsky is openly gay and founded a foundation to help people living with HIV. He now supports the ban on LGBTQ+ expression in Russia.

Sobchak filmed part of the interview at Krasovsky’s apartment, with icons and a portrait of Vladimir Putin in the background, and part of it in a police transport van as they drove around central Moscow. They discussed their shared past — Sobchak and Krasovsky have known each other for many years — his firing from RT, his views on the war, and his feelings toward former friends who oppose it. Here are the most striking quotes from Krasovsky:

• On supporting the war. “I consider Ukraine my country. My homeland is the USSR, my homeland is the Russian Empire — I consider Ukraine part of it. […] When you’ve chosen a side, you shouldn’t forget that there is pain and suffering on the other side too. And that other side is also mine. […] I believed that our deaths and our lives mattered more than their deaths and their lives. And I’m hurt that I believed that.”
• On the cost of the war. “If the question were ‘Should we take Kyiv?’ — of course we should. And Warsaw too. […] But there’s the question of ‘Can we?’ I don’t think so. Our Russian world costs too many lives. Would I want [Ukrainian] land to become part of the Russian empire again? Yes. […] But that’s not going to happen now. And if I had to choose between millions of lives or Kyiv, I would choose millions of lives.”
• On his call to “drown” Ukrainian children. “I phrased it wrong, but the meaning was very simple. If a Russian soldier is marching through Berlin and a Hitler Youth member shoots him in the back, what do we do with that Hitler Youth member? That’s what I said. I was just on a roll. And I apologized sincerely… because I put [RT editor-in-chief] Margarita [Simonyan] and a lot of other people in a difficult position.”
• On missing those who left. “Other things make me feel bad. The fact that I can’t communicate with people I loved and still love [who left Russia because of their opposition to the war]. I feel bad because those people are also acting like assholes. […] I’ll say more — it bothers me that I can’t communicate with people who openly support the Ukrainian army.”
• On the return of those who left. “I believe our Russian victory should be magnanimous. […] I have just as much right to this land as the people who left. […] Whether they helped the Ukrainian forces or not — that will be for the victors’ court to decide, if it chooses to punish. I would want it to be magnanimous. […] I will do everything I can so that everyone who wants to can come back here.”
• On fear. “The time for open conversation is over. I’m scared shitless of a lot of things, I don’t even know what. […] Why wouldn’t you be scared shitless of prison? If they can pick you up right now, why wouldn’t you be scared? There are no rules about who gets locked up. […] I’ve turned into a Soviet person. I’m just scared shitless of everything.”
• On death. “At first I wanted to be buried on a high bank of the Volga under a stone. But now I’d like at least a few people to come to my funeral. […] For at least someone to come, for at least someone to say something, for at least someone to down a shot for you with some kind of regret.”

Krasovsky’s statements, combined with his speech and behavior during the interview, raised suspicions that he was in an unstable emotional state. That was the subject of the most-liked comments under Sobchak’s video. “Judging by her recent interviews, Ksenia is writing a dissertation in psychiatry,” read one comment that received more than 5,000 likes.

The interview also drew significant reaction on Facebook. Among the most notable responses was a post by journalist and LGBTQ+ activist Renat Davletgildeev, who opposes the war. Davletgildeev had previously said that he and Krasovsky had been close but stopped communicating because of Krasovsky’s “transformation.” In the Sobchak interview, Krasovsky mentioned Davletgildeev as one of the people he misses.

In his post, Davletgildeev said he misses Krasovsky too, and thanked him: “I think I rarely said thank you to you. But I will never forget how you pulled me out of the worst situations. And how you saved my life — I won’t forget that either. […] We’re on opposite sides of the barricades, of course. But who the fuck am I if I pretend those years never happened? […] And this — understand me correctly right now. If I happen to outlive you — I will of course fly to your funeral. And I’ll bring flowers to that oak tree overlooking the river. And I know that if I go first, you’ll come to mine. And to my tree. And we’ll definitely talk about everything else someday.”

Journalist Andrei Loshak, who joined the comments, condemned the post. “The funeral talk is beautiful, of course, but you won’t go anywhere if, God forbid, something happens. You’d get arrested there — you wouldn’t even make it out of the airport. And Krasovsky will never see a Schengen visa for the rest of his life. That life is gone and can never come back. And your friend Krasovsky is one of those who destroyed it with his own hands, building a hell in its place where he now suffers himself,” wrote Loshak.

Some commenters pushed back on Loshak. “Krasovsky, seriously, personally helped me with very difficult charitable matters when I was working for [Mikhail] Prokhorov, and found someone who helped a badly injured boy in a very significant way. Am I supposed to forget that and throw mud at him?! I have no illusions about him and never did — we haven’t spoken or seen each other in a long time — but I won’t hide the fact that he helped and never asked for any public recognition in return. And Rinat [Davletgildeev], I’ll say again, wrote about what he feels. At the very least, his memory and personal feelings deserve a calmer response,” replied journalist Arina Borodina.

The broader online debate over the Krasovsky interview kept returning to the same question: does he deserve sympathy? Writer Viktor Shenderovich, literary critic Anna Narinskaya, playwright Mikhail Durnenkov, media manager Sergei Nikolaevich, and actor Maxim Vitorgan, Sobchak’s ex-husband, all weighed in.

So did Sobchak’s current husband, director Konstantin Bogomolov, who in recent years has taken a pro-Kremlin stance, criticizing the West and calling Russia’s invasion of Ukraine “a stroke of luck for the generation” and “a heroic story.” Bogomolov used the discussion around Krasovsky as an occasion to criticize the “Russian liberal intelligentsia.”

“Krasovsky, sometimes striking a false note, sometimes preening a little too much, plays a Marmeladov melody. And they listen, spellbound. They condemn, they recoil, they spit — they even sympathize, even forgive — but the main thing is they listen, they listen to those notes of decay, repentance, pride, humiliation, self-flagellation, and tears so dear to every Russian intellectual. […] How pleasant it is to confirm that ‘we are not him.’ To toss out a contemptuous ‘wretch!’ Or to toss a coin in the form of a couple of sympathetic lines. The Russian liberal intellectual has no other rallying point left. This is the pinnacle of his strength, courage, moral purity, and civic stance. Rats. And Ksenia’s work is wonderful,” wrote Bogomolov.