Margarita Simonyan Quotes

A button is pushed, and suddenly the lights go out in Voronezh. The pipes freeze and there is no heating. Then, from the other side, a button is pushed, and the lights go out in Harlem, or in Florida.

In our time, I don't believe there can be a full-scale hot war like the Second World War, nor a long Cold War, but a war of a third type. It will be a cyberwar.

A war is completely unavoidable.

Believe me, I’ve categorically forbidden everyone from inviting people who says nonsense or promote some unhealthy strange theories on air. But at the same time, if we only give airtime to the same people as the mainstream media does, it means it wouldn’t at all be clear why we’re doing this.

Actually, I also like America in a lot of ways. I have friends and family there, the food is good, at the end of the day. I really love American culture . . . In the 1990s we looked at America like a saviour. We proudly wore American flag T-shirts and caps. I learnt the Declaration of Independence by heart.

I noticed that mainstream western TV channels, especially CNN and ABC, show the same thing. It really ate me up inside. I realised that there are quite a lot of people in the world who don’t think that’s how it should be, so it probably makes sense to make something for them. Obviously if our audience is [only] Kremlinologists and Russia watchers, then that’s very few people.

I don’t see why you have the nerve to think that you know better than anyone how to run the world, and who’s marginal in the world and who isn’t. You’ve made so many mistakes, you’ve started so many wars in the last few years, destroyed so many lives, killed so many people, created so many problems.

We are far less critical of western policy than western media are critical of Russia. When was the last time you read anything good about Russia? Anywhere? Name me one publication. That’s why this cliché that Russia Today is an anti-western channel brings a smile to my face.

Everything you say will be used against you.

The West never got over the Cold War stereotype. One thing that only few journalists understand is that Russia started dissolving the Soviet Union of its own accord. We were the ones to realize that Communism was a failure. We understood that it was wrong to impose our will on other nations. We released the Eastern bloc into freedom. We are a different country today, one with a different mentality -- which is something that Western journalists sometimes find difficult to comprehend. You, for example, stated earlier that Russia was acting aggressively without backing it up with facts.