The man hand-picked by Russian President Vladimir Putin to lead the country's state media appeared on a nightly news program on Sunday to say his country could "turn the U.S. into radioactive dust."
In the clip, Dmitry Kiselyov, the recently installed head of Russia Today, stood before a giant mushroom cloud and proclaimed, "Russia is the only country in the world realistically capable of turning the United States into radioactive dust," or ash, depending on the translation.

He made the statement on state-controlled Rossiya 1 television, and was broadcast as the first exit polls out of the Crimean peninsula showed 93% of people there wanted to leave Ukraine and become a part of Russia. (That number later jumped up to 95% as the ballots were counted.)
See also: Crimea Votes: The Day in Pictures
He then spoke of the country's "dead hand" defense system, saying, "Even if people in all our command posts after an enemy atomic attack cannot be contacted, the system will automatically fire our missiles from mines and submarines in the right direction," he said as an image of a Russian missile headed to the United States appeared on the screen.
Kiselev is not your average moron. He is Russia's most senior government media executive, essentially minister of propaganda.
— Leonid Ragozin (@leonidragozin) March 16, 2014
Kiselyov is not just your average TV anchor. He is a Kremlin loyalist who was chosen to lead the new iteration of Russia Today after Putin dissolved the previous state-owned media organization RIA Novosti last December.
He doesn't appear to believe in a free and objective press ("I understood that objective journalism, distilled, is absolutely not in demand"), has been called "the Glenn Beck of Russia," and has said an offensive thing or two about homosexuals ("They should be banned from donating blood, sperm").
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