Russian Media Mocks Ukrainians Over 'Death Generator' Use, Says They'd Suffocate From Fumes

Russian media has mocked Ukrainians for buying and using generators amid power outages caused by Moscow's missile strikes, adding that they would likely suffocate from the fumes.

In a live broadcast on the state-owned television channel Rossiya 24 on Tuesday, hosts Alexei Kazakov and Evgenia Petrukhina claimed that Ukrainians were stealing generators from their neighbors and dying from the fumes because they "are too stupid to set up an air duct" in the basement, according to a translation by the global news publication The Insider.

At one point, Petrukhina showed a post from the Telegram channel of Ukraina.Ru of a photograph of graffiti that read, "Bast**d, bring my generator back." The channel was founded by the state-owned news agency Russia Today.

"Apparently, Ukraine will have more and more trouble generating media ideas because it takes generating electricity at the very least. And that's problematic. ... News feeds feature more and more reports about carbon monoxide poisoning. Thus, a girl in the village of Belgorodka misused her generator and had to be hospitalized," Petrukhiona said. "These devices are real death generators. ... The government in Kyiv is not convinced, though."

The hosts later said that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was the guilty party for the "full-blown energy crisis" across the country.

"On the one hand, it is a sorry sight; on the other, it was to be expected because Zelensky's stubbornness has already driven this and many other cities and communities to a full-blown energy crisis," Kazakov said. "In Odesa, for one, you cannot count on a stable electricity supply for at least another two or three months, which is to say, until the end of the winter. This is the local authorities' forecast."

Kazakov and Petrukhina's telecast comes as about 1.5 million Ukrainians living in Odessa grapple with another power outage after Russia launched drone strikes that hit two energy facilities in the region.

A spokesperson for the region's administration said that while the lights would likely be restored "in the coming days," a complete restoration of energy facilities could take between two to three months, as reported by the New York Post.