News
RT head Margarita Simonyan announced on Sept. 26 that her husband, Russian film director and propagandist Tigran Keosayan, had died at age 59. Photo: Margarita Simonyan's Telegram channel
Tigran Keosayan, a filmmaker and host of the propaganda program International Sawbench on Russia’s NTV channel, has died aged 59, his wife Margarita Simonyan announced in a post on Telegram.
“Tonight Tigran went to the Creator. Thank you to everyone who prayed. Please do not call me or the family right now. Thank you all, thank you,” Simonyan wrote.
Simonyan is the head of the state-controlled propaganda network RT, formerly known as Russia Today.
Keosayan had been hospitalized since December with longstanding heart problems. He had survived heart attacks in 2008 and 2010 and later underwent coronary stenting. In January 2025, Keosayan suffered a clinical death, fell into a coma, and never regained consciousness.
Keosayan was a Soviet, Russian, and Armenian actor, a film and television director, a screenwriter, a TV host, and a propagandist. Since Sept. 3, 2016, he had hosted the Saturday evening “satirical entertainment show” International Sawmill (“Mezhdunarodnaya Pilorama”) on NTV, which advanced Kremlin narratives.
His directing credits included the propaganda movie “The Crimean Bridge. Made With Love!” which was released in 2018. The film portrayed the building of the bridge connecting Russian-occupied Crimea with mainland Russia. The 19-kilometer span has been crucial to Moscow’s logistics since the invasion began, making it a high-value target that has drawn repeated strikes from Ukrainian forces.
In 2022, following the start of the invasion, the EU, UK, Canada and several other countries imposed personal sanctions against Keosayan. In June 2022, Kazakhstan’s Foreign Ministry declared him persona non grata.
The EU's document outlining the sanctions against Keosayan read:
“In his state-funded TV show 'International Sawmill with Tigran Keosayan,' he consistently portrayed Ukraine as a weak and corrupt country which had been maintained solely thanks to Western help. He suggested that the Ukrainian authorities were not legitimate. He repeatedly stated that Crimea belonged to Russia, and that Donbas was not part of Ukraine. Mr Keosayan participated in the 'Russian Donbas' forum which was organised by the authorities of the so-called 'Donetsk People’s Republic' in Donetsk with an aim to spread the doctrine of 'Russian Donbas.' He publicly accused Ukraine of escalating the conflict. Therefore, he is responsible for actively supporting or implementing actions or policies which undermine or threaten the territorial integrity, sovereignty and independence of Ukraine, as well as stability and security in Ukraine.”
Keosayan’s comedy show was also notable for its racism and cringeworthy lack of humor. In an episode from late 2020, a female correspondent dressed as “Barack Obama” — made up in blackface and decked out in gold chains — repeated the phrase, in English, “Black lives matter, Black lives matter,” while the host intoned, “you don’t have to yell; there is no racism here.”
In what turned out to be his final episode, broadcast on Dec. 21, 2024, Keosayan mocked European discussions about providing Ukraine with security guarantees following a hypothetical end to the war:
“Explain this to me. Why the heck would a contingent of troops from Europe be necessary after a peace agreement has been reached? Gentlemen, why waste money on this? Just send a couple wreaths of mourning to Kyiv… [Instead], everyone who invested in Ukraine these past three years now wants to take their share of the land.”