Russian TV Says Poland Could Cease to Exist: 'History Doesn't Teach People'

The host of a news program in Russia has issued an ominous warning in response to Polish prime minister Mateusz Morawiecki's condemnation of Vladimir Putin.

The show 60 Minutes on Russia-1 has been pushing fiery rhetoric justifying Putin's invasion of Ukraine, while condemning the actions of NATO members, in particular the U.K. and the U.S. for their supporting of Kyiv's war effort.

In Friday's episode, host Olga Skabeyeva took aim at Poland and Morawiecki's op-ed in The Daily Telegraph where he said Putin's idea of a 'Russkiy Mir' (Russian world) was "a cancer" which proliferated in Russian society and "poses a deadly threat to the whole of Europe."

Morawiecki said Putin's vision was akin to 20th-century "communism and Nazism" and we must root out this monstrous new ideology entirely."

However, in a segment Skabeyeva said that "the fascist terror is now gaining momentum not just in Ukraine but in Europe too" as she quoted Morawiecki's comments.

"History doesn't teach people anything," she said, "after all thanks to such self-satisfied and arrogant idiots. Poland has already on several occasions ceased to exist as an independent state."

The clip was shared on Twitter by Ukrainian internal affairs adviser, Anton Gerashchenko, who wrote, "Russian propagandist Skabeeva threatens #Poland with loss of independence. Every day Russian TV throws new threats."

Skabeyeva's rants against those opposing Russia fits her description by some as the Kremlin's "propagandist-in-chief."

In recent months, she has fabricated claims about Western leaders, spread a conspiracy theory about the massacre in the Ukrainian city of Bucha and even said that Russians were in the middle of "World War III."

Earlier this month, another anchor, Dmitry Kiselyov, who has close ties to Putin, described a nuclear attack as a graphic showing the islands of Ireland and Great Britain being wiped off the map.

During an edition of Vesti Nedeli (News of the Week) Kiselyov said a strike by Russia's Poseidon nuclear underwater drone could drown the U.K under a 1500-foot tidal wave of radioactive seawater.

After the story made headlines in Ireland, the Irish foreign ministry called for the "avoidance of any nuclear rhetoric which will only worsen an already dangerous and unpredictable situation."

However, it's not clear just how closely the narrative on Russian state media follows Kremlin policy.

As previously reported by Newsweek, Konstantin Sonin, a Russian-born political economist at the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy said hosts on state television are often trying to second guess Kremlin thinking.

"They do not actually know what Putin thinks," he said, "so they are trying to gamble."