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Russian state media is teaching its citizens that Ukrainian children should be drowned, a history expert has told the UN.

The education of its people to believe “genocide is normal” is doing irreparable harm to its culture professor of history at Yale University Timothy Snyder said at the UN Security Council.

He said that harm to Russia is a result of Russian policy, not the West, accusing the state of forcing 750,000 of its people to leave the country by invading Ukraine.

The professor said: “If you stand in Russia with a sign saying ‘no to war’, you will be arrested and very likely imprisoned. If you stand in Ukraine with a sign that says ‘no to war’’ regardless of what language it is in, nothing will happen to you.”

Referring to the normalisation of genocide, he said: “We see this in the President of Russia’s repeated claims that Ukraine does not exist. We see this in genocidal fantasies on Russian state media.”

“We see this when Russian state television proclaims that Ukrainian children should be drowned.”

‘UK fought two wars with Russia, we are not Russophobic’

A top UK official told the council that Russophobia is one of an “ever-growing list of excuses the Russian government has come up with to justify its war”.

Speaking in fluent Russian, Minister Counsellor Fergus Eckersley said the UK does not suffer from Russophobia – something the Kremlin has accused Western allies of Ukraine of practicing.

“We fought together in two world wars. I myself spent seven years studying Russia’s language, its history and its remarkable literature”.

“We do not want Russia to fail as a state, as the Russian delegation sometimes claims. Quite the opposite, in fact. We want Russia to be a prosperous and stable nation – just one that does not invade and try to annex its neighbours.”