Russian federal television channels did not cover the missile strike on Voronezh, in which five people were killed. Reports about the attack were absent from news broadcasts on June 22 and 23 on Channel One, Rossiya 1 and NTV.
According to the outlet, the broadcasts omitted both information about the shelling itself and the official report by local authorities on its consequences. The subject was not even included in previews before the main news programs, although federal channels had previously reported, for example, on Ukrainian drone attacks on Moscow.
On June 22, Voronezh was mentioned in Channel One’s daytime and evening news only in connection with an FSB statement saying that a “Ukrainian agent” had been detained in the city.
The silence on federal television angered even Russian pro-war Telegram channels. The authors of Verum Regnum, which the article says has 68,500 subscribers, wrote that they spent an hour watching Rossiya 24, where foreign politics, the economy, weather and other topics were discussed, but the strike on Voronezh was not mentioned at all.
“There has still been no official reaction from the president, apparently because ‘the folder has not yet been delivered,’” the Telegram channel Romanov Light, with 148,000 subscribers, said.
As the report notes, Vladimir Putin was taking part in commemorative events in Moscow on June 22, almost at the time of the strike on Voronezh, marking the 85th anniversary of the start of the Great Patriotic War, and did not publicly comment on what had happened.
The Telegram channel Rybar, which is close to Russia’s Defense Ministry and has about 1.5 million subscribers, criticized Voronezh residents for posting photos and videos of the aftermath on social media. At the same time, the channel devoted only a few lines to the strike and its consequences in its June 22 roundup.