In an interview with the Austrian television channel Puls 4, top Russian UN diplomat Dmitri Poljanski accused the moderator of drug use. “I don’t know what you smoke,” the deputy head of the Russian UN mission in New York told moderator Thomas Mohr on Monday night.
The journalist questioned Moscow’s view that what was happening in Ukraine was not a war, but just a military operation to end a war. Ukraine has been at war with the Russian-speaking population in eastern Ukraine for eight years, Polyansky said.
While the Russian army is carrying out high-precision strikes and not attacking civilian targets, “Ukrainian nationalists” are using civilians as human shields, Polyansky said.
Previously blocked on Twitter
At the end of the controversial 16-minute conversation, the diplomat again stated that journalists should not smoke “that kind of thing”.
A few days ago, Twitter blocked Poljanski’s account for misuse after the war in Ukraine.