Ah, gotcha. Yeah, it’s always hard to know what really happened when dealing with this kinda stuff in the media. In this English version they say,
a Russian government official said…The official, like others, spoke on condition of anonymity due to concerns for personal safety.
Here’s the Russian version of the article (which uses штурмовики) where they instead say,
a Russian government official explained to The Moscow Times.
So it sounds like they’re not quoting a public statement from the Kremlin, but someone on the inside feeding information to this outlet. Allegedly. Could be that person’s wording, or could be the outlet’s “interpretation”.
It sucks that this is how humanity has to learn these lessons. “Sure, we’ve done a holocaust before…but have we done a holocaust during the age of the internet with a bunch of propaganda saying it’s not happening?”