Turkish TV ejects guest over anti-Putin T-shirt

A senior Ukrainian lawmaker has accused a Turkish TV channel of censorship, after it axed his interview over his refusal to cover up a T-shirt displaying an insult to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Aleksey Goncharenko, a member of the European Solidarity faction in Kiev’s parliament, took to social media on Monday to criticize TRT World. He claimed that the English-language channel did not allow him to “speak on air” because of the T-shirt.

“First they asked me to change my T-shirt. I refused. Then they started insisting. I said, ‘Either I go on air like this, or I don’t go on air at all.’ And they took me off the air,” Goncharenko wrote in a post on X (formerly Twitter).

An ally of former president Pyotr Poroshenko, the lawmaker earlier called for Ukraine to develop or acquire its own nuclear weapons to protect itself, claiming: “we should disregard everything and everyone and make the bomb”. Kiev voluntarily agreed to denuclearization in 1994 in exchange for security guarantees from the US, Britain, and Russia under the Budapest Memorandum.

Goncharenko currently chairs the Committee on Migration, Refugees and Displaced Persons in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe.

Crude rhetoric from Ukrainian officials against Moscow has become more common in recent months. In December, Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky and his chief of staff, Andrey Yermak, publicly insulted the Russian president over Putin’s suggestion to stage “high-tech duel” between the Russian Oreshnik missile and Western air defenses. Zelensky described Putin as a “dumbass,” sparking outrage from the Kremlin.

Earlier, Zelensky used vulgar wording in response to a journalist’s question about starting peace talks with Russia.

“What should Russia do? Preferably to go [expletive],” the Ukrainian leader replied, deploying a phrase used by Ukrainian propaganda to claim a heroic last stand on Snake Island in the Black Sea, at an earlier stage in the conflict. The unit that supposedly cursed at a Russian warship and heroically perished later showed up alive as prisoners, revealing the story to be fiction.

In response, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has suggested that Zelensky lacks composure under pressure. “It appears to be the result of emotional overload, an inability to pull himself together, hence this rudeness. His nerves are failing,” Peskov said.