
Russian federal channels ignored the Ukrainian Armed Forces' missile strike on Voronezh. Reports about the shelling were not included in the news releases for June 22 and 23 on Channel One, Rossiya 1 and NTV. The attack and the official report on its consequences from local authorities were not mentioned even in news announcements before the main release, as was previously the case, for example, with Ukrainian drone attacks on Moscow .
On June 22, in the daytime and final news release of Channel One, Voronezh was mentioned only in connection with the FSB statement that a “Ukrainian agent” had been detained in the city.
Russian pro-war bloggers on telegram were outraged by the silence of federal television channels. “We spent an hour watching the Rossiya 24 TV channel. Starmer’s resignation, Britain’s national debt, sharks, neural networks, Iran, the USA, oil, Unified State Examination, milk yield, harvests, rainfall in Moscow... Not a word about the missile attack on Voronezh,” wrote the authors of the Verum Regnum telegram channel (68.5 thousand subscribers).
Others noted that Vladimir Putin, who on June 22, almost during the attack on Voronezh, participated in commemorative events on the occasion of the 85th anniversary of the start of the Great Patriotic War in Moscow, did not comment on what happened. “There has still been no official reaction from the president—probably, ‘they haven’t brought the folder yet,’” noted “Romanov Light” (148 thousand subscribers).
The popular telegram channel “Rybar” (1.5 million subscribers) and close to the Russian Ministry of Defense criticized the residents of Voronezh for posting videos on social networks showing the consequences of the attack on the city. The authors of the channel devoted several lines to the strike itself and its consequences in the report for June 22.