On 5 August 2022, Russian MP Aleksey Zhuravlev threatened to kill the correspondent of German newspaper Bild in Ukraine Björn Stritzel. During a prime time appearance on Russian state TV channel “Russia 1”, Zhuravlev said: “I want to say to this Nazi: we’ll all come [over there] and kill all of you”, in an apparent reference to the Bild correspondent and his colleagues in Ukraine. Yevgeni Popov, the host of “60 minutes”, the program the Russian MP appeared in, reacted by asking him to moderate his speech, without however clearly denouncing the threat.
Following the airing of the show, Zhuravlev stood by his words, claiming they were not inappropriate, did not constitute a threat, and were “the reality of life”, in an apparent reference to active warfare in Ukraine. As the first deputy chairman of the Russian parliament’s defence committee, Zhuravlev recently traveled to Russian-occupied areas of Eastern Ukraine, where he was observed posing with weapons.