Russian state television has declared that World War III has already started after the sinking of its naval vessel Moskva in the Ukraine war. Though Russia said this was damaged after a fire, Ukraine claimed the credit of destroying the flagship vessel of Moscow’s Black Sea Fleet through its Neptune missile.

But the sinking of the ship led to meltdown on the Kremlin’s main propaganda mouthpiece Russia 1. Presenter Olga Skabeyeva made the chilling statement, informing the viewers that “what it’s escalated into can safely be called World War III” and insisted “that’s entirely for sure.”

“Now we’re definitely fighting against Nato infrastructure, if not Nato itself. We need to recognise that,” Skabeyeva further said, according to Metro.

A guest on the show compared the sinking of Moskva to an attack on Russian soil, despite Kremlin insisting that it went down because of a fire. 

The man was reminded that instead of calling it a war, the government-approved phrase to be used for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is “special military operation”.

The clip of the show is going wildly viral on social media.

“They are poking the bear (pardon the pun) but in this case the NATO bear,” a Twitter user commented.

“They’ve lost 500 tanks, another 2,000 other vehicles, 82 aircraft, 18,000+ soldiers and a battlecruiser. NATO hasn’t even arrived yet. It is fair to say that this war against NATO is not going well for Russia,” another user tweeted.

On another state-run television channel, an anchor argued that Ukraine was doing the West’s bidding by carrying out “yet more provocations, bloody, horrible, completely unthinkable.”

Olesya Loseva, the host of Vremya Pokazhet on Channel One, said the West was now supplying “zillions of weapons” to Ukraine.

Meanwhile, Russian news agencies reported late on Thursday that warship Moskva sank in rough weather while being towed back to port.