Alexey Fenenko, a doctor from Moscow University, spoke about “Finnish Prime Minister Kaja Kailas” on Russia’s main channel Rossiya 1.
Russia’s main state television channel Rossiya 1’s current affairs program featured a strange error on Wednesday. Regular commentator on political topics, Alexey Fenenko, gave a long speech about the speeches of “Finnish Prime Minister Kaja Kailas”.
Kaja Kailas is naturally the Prime Minister of Estonia, while the Prime Minister of Finland is Sanna Marin.
Francis Scarr, a BBC journalist who follows Russian media, noted the matter on Twitter. He shared a clip from the TV broadcast with English subtitles on the service.
Fenenko, a scholar at Moscow University, began by talking about comments by “Finnish Prime Minister Kaja Kallas” about how Russians should repent for their crimes.
With this he apparently referred to Kailas’ February speech at the Security Conference in Munich. There, Callas said that if Russia wanted to normalize its relations with the West after the end of the war in Ukraine, it should be put on trial for war of aggression and war crimes.
For Fenenko, it was an ass bridge to a speech about how, according to him, Finland is the one that “should repent”. The Russian innkeeper justified the case with typical Kremlin propaganda about the 1947 Paris Peace Treaty, among other things.
Olga Skabezeva, the presenter of the 60 Minutes program, appeared to immediately notice the mistake based on her expressions seen in the video. However, he allows Fenenko to continue his speech for a long time.
Skabayeva is a loyal mouthpiece of Vladimir Putin’s regime, known as “the iron puppet of Putin’s television”. Perhaps he doesn’t want to interrupt an otherwise relevant promotional speech.
After Fenenko spoke for about a minute and 45 seconds, Skabezeva also could not help but intervene.
“But Kaja Kailas is from Estonia,” he says.
Fenenko is silent for a few seconds and the look shows confusion.
Then the commentator continues as if nothing had happened:
“Another thing is also very serious…”
Iltalehti and Yell previously reported on this matter in Finland.
Aleksey Fenenko is a well-known political commentator on Russian state television. According to Izvestiza, Fenenko has a doctorate in political science and works at Moscow State University at the Faculty of World Politics.
A video of Kaja Kailas was playing in the studio behind Fenenko’s speech about Finland. Photo: Screenshot from Francis Scarr’s Twitter account
Presenter Olga Skabezeva intervened in error when Fenenko spoke on the subject for approximately one minute and 45 seconds. Photo: Screenshot from Francis Scarr’s Twitter account
Fenenko was silent for a few minutes, looking around. Photo: Screenshot from Francis Scarr’s Twitter account
He then continued with his speech as if nothing had happened. Photo: Screenshot from Francis Scarr’s Twitter account
Did you notice a small smile on the face of Skabezeva, known as “the iron puppet of Putin’s television”? Photo: Screenshot from Francis Scarr’s Twitter account
Both Kaja Kailas and Sanna Marin have been targets of Russian TV commentators before. A living example of this was seen last February. Then the speaker was Igor Korotchenko, who was called a defense expert in Russia.
Korotchenko accused the prime ministers of Estonia and Finland of hating Russia, and in this context spoke of “the election of Aryan women who sent Jews to the crematorium” during World War II.
Even then, the channel was Rosija 1 and the comments, which circulated on Twitter, were seen by the BBC’s Francis Scarr.
