Russian state television hosts have denounced U.S.-Israeli strikes on Moscow’s ally Iran as “war crimes,” accusing Washington of using diplomacy as cover for military action and warning that similar tactics could one day be deployed against Russia.
Their rhetoric casts the conflict as further proof of U.S. destabilization abroad, as well as a cautionary lesson for Moscow as it navigates strained ties with Washington and seeks leverage in talks over Ukraine.
Vladimir Solovyov, one of Russia’s most prominent state television presenters and a vocal supporter of the Kremlin, said on his primetime weekly news show that the U.S. had made negotiations a part of its military strategy.
“It’s now clear to us that the negotiation process appears to be no more than part of their military operation, a redeployment against a peaceful opponent,” he said, referring to the U.S.-Iranian nuclear talks in the weeks leading up to Washington’s strikes.
“This technique will be used against us,” he added, before claiming: “Russia never has to do this.”
On the Rossia 1 talk show “60 Minutes,” co-host Yevgeny Popov, a state television presenter and lawmaker from the ruling United Russia party, described U.S. President Donald Trump’s actions as an “immersion of the Middle East in chaos.”
Introducing a clip of U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham, Popov said the lawmaker was speaking about “another war crime of the U.S. Army with a smile on his face.”
“Not since Pearl Harbor has the U.S. experienced such powerful and painful attacks on its military infrastructure,” Popov wrote in a Telegram post following reported Iranian counterattacks.
“The United States can no longer guarantee anyone's security. Even its own. Iran has written this fact in stone,” he added.
Roman Babayan, a television and radio host who heads the Govorit Moskva radio station, said the strikes show that the U.S. could not be trusted as a negotiating partner.
“Those who are powerful do what they want. It’s simply the law of the jungle,” he said. “If they enter negotiations, it means they are preparing for your murder.”
“The man with the red tie [Trump] told us about their four-day military operation and now sings about four weeks. Their calculation was for something totally different,” he said.
Olga Skabeyeva, Popov’s co-host on “60 Minutes” and one of the most recognizable faces on Russian state television, slammed the White House’s publication of a montage of the Iran strikes set to the song “Macarena,” calling it a display of the Trump administration’s “perverse sense of humor.”
She claimed that U.S.-made ATACMS missiles were being used for “chaotic strikes on civilians,” pointing to an American strike that reportedly hit a school in Tehran and killed up to 168 people.
“International agencies confirmed the footage but otherwise the civilized world did not notice the mass murder of children,” she said.
She also took aim at Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s reference to joint efforts against “Iranian banditism,” saying the term appeared to refer to “the children being buried today.”
Netanyahu himself did not use the term “Iranian banditism.”
The U.S. and Israel have said their actions target military infrastructure and security threats posed by Iran.
Moscow has so far sought to avoid open confrontation with Washington since Trump’s return to the presidency in January 2025 in hopes of securing a favorable peace deal in the Ukraine war.
The Kremlin said this week that it lacked “clarity” on the timing and venue of the next round of trilateral talks on Ukraine following the latest flare-up of hostilities in the Middle East.
“The Americans obviously have had a lot more on their plates in recent days,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, but noted he saw no indication that the Middle East conflict would alter Washington’s approach to Ukraine negotiations.
President Vladimir Putin has largely kept quiet on the strikes on Iran, condemning what he called the “assassination” of Iran's supreme leader and offering himself up as a mediator between Tehran and the Gulf states as the conflict spills into the wider region.
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