Simonyan filed a statement of slander against the person who complained about her to the Investigative Committee

RT editor-in-chief Margarita Simonyan said that she filed a complaint against “an assistant to some deputy” under an article of libel (Article 128.1 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation). According to Ms. Simonyan, he filed a statement against her and wrote that she “offered to launch a nuclear strike on the territory of the Russian Federation.” Earlier, the editor-in-chief of RT said that if you carry out a thermonuclear explosion over Siberia, “nothing so terrible” will happen.

“I filed an application against some assistant of some deputy who filed an application against me. Under the article “Slander”. Because he not only filed a complaint against me, but also wrote that I “offered to launch a nuclear strike on the territory of the Russian Federation.” Of course, I did not and could not propose any such heresy. Such a monstrous accusation discredits my reputation and causes me all sorts of damage and suffering,” Ms. Simonyan wrote in Telegram.

On October 3, assistant to Moscow City Duma deputy Evgeny Stupin (recognized as a foreign agent in the Russian Federation) Evgeny Korolev wrote to Telegramthat he sent appeals to the Investigative Committee of Russia (ICR) and the Ministry of Internal Affairs with a demand to analyze the statements of Margarita Simonyan and bring her to administrative or criminal liability.

“Today Margarita Simonyan, in her program Ch.T.D, proposed launching a nuclear strike on the territory of the Russian Federation, namely Siberia,” wrote Mr. Korolev, among other things.

The editor-in-chief of RT spoke about a thermonuclear strike earlier on October 3. As she explained, “one smart person” (in her words, a radioelectronics engineer) told her that “if you create a thermonuclear explosion hundreds of kilometers away on our own territory somewhere over Siberia, then nothing will happen on Earth. Nothing too bad. Not the nuclear winter that everyone is afraid of. Nothing will happen.” The head of the media added that instead, all equipment will be disabled, so “we will return to a year like ’93.”

“I’ll even be happy. At least I won’t have to explain to my children why everyone has gadgets and they don’t. But at least this will be a weight off our shoulders,” said Margarita Simonyan.

The Kremlin reacted to the statement by the editor-in-chief of RT: declaringthat Russia is not going to conduct nuclear tests. State Duma deputy Maria Prusakova, in a video message to Mrs. Simonyan, stated that Siberians perceived her statement as a deep insult. Mayor of Novosibirsk Anatoly Lokot, commenting on the words of the editor-in-chief, said, that “the problem of ground-based thermonuclear tests and any explosions associated with the release of thermonuclear energy, nuclear energy, must be treated very responsibly.” At the same time, the head of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov, stood up for Mrs. Simonyan. “Margarita Simonyan is not so stupid as to propose a nuclear strike on her own territory,” he wrote.

Erdni Kagaltynov