WATCH: Russian Media Down and Out Over Massive Ukraine Drone Strike, Calls to Execute Their Own Soldiers for Posting Video

Screenshots via YouTube.

Russian state media personalities reacted glumly to the news of Ukraine’s drone strike on Russian aircraft in a clip flagged by Daily Beast reporter Julia Davis, calling for a harsh crackdown on the truckers who were unwittingly duped and the soldiers who posted video of the damage. Even a flattering clip from Tucker Carlson’s show failed to lift their spirits.

Ukraine’s drone strike, reportedly the result of eighteen months of planning under the code name Operation Spider’s Web, stunned the world on Sunday as video was posted online showing dozens of Russian fighter jets in flames — including strategic nuclear bombers.

Davis, a Ukrainian-born columnist who founded the Russian Media Monitor YouTube channel to report on Russian state media, shared the clip on her social media along with a caption noting that the “propagandists did their best to cope with Ukraine’s daring operation and used Tucker Carlson’s clip to boost their morale, but their nerves still got the best of them.” Davis has repeatedly pointed out how Carlson, a former Fox News host, gets frequent and positive coverage in Russian media due to his commentary that is viewed as sympathetic or allied with the Kremlin.

The video clip features host Vladimir Solovyov, head of RT Margarita Simonyan, former KGB sleeper agent in the United States Andrey Bezrukov, and Evgeny Minchenko, head of the International Institute for Political Expertise, from a clip of the latest episode of Sunday Evening With Vladimir Solovyov. English translations are provided in captions created by Davis.

At the beginning of the clip, host Solovyov describes the drone strikes as “a terrible tragedy” that means “a world war” is “inevitable” — a common Kremlin talking point. Solovyov swiftly pivots to talking about Carlson, praising his visit to Russia, and saying that he was “very good” and had benefited from the trip.

Carlson understood the reason for the “deep divide between Russia and the West” and “why the West lost its mind this way,” said Solovyov, as he cued up a clip of Carlson and his guest saying that the “reason” the U.S. hated Vladimir Putin was that he had “decapitate[d] the oligarchy,” made the Russian economy recover, and made it “a beautiful country.”

It should perhaps be noted that economists generally take a much less sunny view of the current state and future prospects of the Russian economy; losing several billion dollars of planes and other military equipment over the weekend will not help.

Simonyan spoke next, solemnly vowing that the “time would inevitably come” for payback for the drone strike. “Vengeance, or rather just punishment, for those organizing this is also inevitable,” she said, adding that it would be similarly “inevitable” for them to negotiate “about how they prefer to stand in front of the wall, with a blindfold, or on their knees, facing the wall, or bravely looking down the barrel of a gun” — directly threatening that the planners of the drone strike should be executed by firing squad. “Those are the three options about which we will come to an agreement with them.”

She then launched into a rant about how Russian schoolchildren were not properly taught Russian history in school, and now “we have quite an unpleasant number of teenagers who don’t understand what we’re fighting for.”

Simonyan continued, blaming “the absence of education on [Russian] history in Ukraine” for leading to the war, and claiming that Austria and Poland decided to “create the Ukrainian language” in order to “mentally tear these people away from us, away from Russia, to tell them, ‘you are not one people.'”

This is not accurate. Ukrainian has existed as a separate language from Russian for centuries and is not a NATO plot. Claims like this are part of the ongoing Kremlin propaganda to reject Ukrainian identity and culture.

After a commercial break, Solvyov brought up the drone strikes again, calling them “exceptionally unpleasant incidents” that were happening all over Russia. He described the Russian soldiers who “happily upload videos from everywhere” as “unwise citizens,” and called on the government to pass “harsh laws” to punish them.

Solvyov denounced the timing of the drone strike as proof that Ukraine “and their European owners” were “not the least bit interested in negotiations” and instead wanted an “escalation.”

He later brought up the videos being posted by army conscripts again, and called for them to be executed.

“Can we execute this conscript by shooting?” he asked. “Bring out this dirtbag and execute him! Right in front of the formation as a traitor to the Motherland, who is simply working in the interests of the enemy.”

“How did these trucks get through? Who has inspected them?” he angrily demanded, scoffing at the idea the truckers were not aware, and should have been more careful about where the cargo was picked up, who loaded it, and made sure to look inside and inspect it.

“Don’t play dumb,” Solvyov scolded. “How did you pass the inspection points, the weigh ins? How did it all happen?”

“Who will be held responsible for this?” asked Bezrukov.

Watch the video above via Russian Media Monitor on YouTube.