Late last month the Suchet family celebrated ascending to the very pinnacle of the British establishment. The actor David Suchet, 75, best known for his career-defining role as Poirot, was knighted by the Duke of Cambridge at Windsor Castle for services to drama and charity after a career spanning more than 50 years.

As Sir David described the ceremony as the “proudest moment of his life”, his older brother John Suchet, the 77-year-old Classic FM presenter, was among those to tweet his congratulations.

And yet there is a third lesser-known Suchet who is provoking outrage by parroting Putin’s propaganda and casting aspersions while his troops invade Ukraine. This week Rory Suchet, one of John Suchet’s three sons from his first marriage, has been a constant presence on the Kremlin-backed broadcaster Russia Today (RT) where he has worked for more than a decade as its main news anchor. 

On Thursday, Suchet appeared to deny there was an invasion at all. “The West are calling this an invasion but I’m not seeing any Russian tanks rolling into any major cities,” he said, precisely as Putin’s forces were beginning to encircle the Ukrainian capital.

He has also previously accused the west of “demonising” Putin and suggested the MH17 plane crash in 2014 over Ukraine – killing nearly 300 people – which investigators have blamed on a Russian missile was in fact part of a western plot. 

The Suchet brothers have been a fixture of the nation’s screens for decades. Prior to his retirement in 2004, John Suchet worked for ITN, both as a newsreader and anchoring coverage of national events including the funeral of the Princess of Wales. When Sir David was once asked by a fan if he was famous, he replied, “No, but my brother reads the 10 o’clock news.”

The Suchets are far less vocal acknowledging the on-screen exploits of Rory Suchet on RT. The channel has been heavily criticised for touting shameless propaganda over the invasion of Ukraine. Its editor-in-chief Margarita Simonyan has been targeted with EU sanctions while there have been calls for a number of countries to ban the channel – including Britain where Culture Secretary Nadine Dorries has asked the watchdog Ofcom to review its presence on air.

Such is the building pressure that even former Scottish Minister Alex Salmond, who was previously content cashing in on long-standing links to the channel, has announced he is suspending his RT chat show “until peace is re-established in Ukraine”. However Suchet, its main anchor, has continued on air asserting the Kremlin line that Putin is in fact attempting to operate as a peacemaker in Ukraine and questioning whether it is an invasion at all.

Some on social media have likened Suchet to “Lord Haw-Haw”, the nickname for the radio presenter William Joyce who broadcast Nazi propaganda from Germany to British audiences during the Second World War. Hefin David, a Member of the Senedd in Wales, is among those criticising him this week, tweeting: 

Chilling to watch Rory Suchet on Russia Today employ familiar news presentation ‘interviewing’ professional propagandists to disseminate lies. It looks so horribly plausible.

— Hefin David MS/AS (@hef4caerphilly) February 22, 2022

Suchet's fellow RT British anchor Nikki Aaron has similarly gone on the defensive over Putin's invasion, trumpeting Kremlin statements about the attack simply being “military assistance” of pro-Russian separatists.

When contacted by the Telegraph, John Suchet said he had “absolutely no comment to make” but he has previously defended his son’s outlandish and on occasion offensive on air comments. In 2014 Rory posted messages on Twitter accusing the West of anti-Russian bias, saying “expect to see posters soon of Putin personally bayonetting babies”. At the time John Suchet admitted RT had an agenda but defended his son, saying: “He's learning his trade as a newscaster and I'm proud of him.”

During a rare interview published in Monocle magazine that same year, Rory Suchet gave an insight into his thinking, speaking dismissively of the “financiers” and “corporations” who really control the western media. The Telegraph understands some family members and former colleagues are increasingly concerned about his hardline views. Suchet was contacted via RT to comment for this article but received no reply.

Suchet grew up in Britain but started his broadcasting career in the US where, in the early Nineties, he worked as a DJ for TK101, a rock radio station in Florida. In 2001 he joined CNN as a radio presenter and later moved on to its international TV network, where according to his official profile he was “the proud recipient of three awards for investigative journalism”. 

In 2009 he joined RT International and moved out to its Moscow newsroom. The Telegraph has spoken to a number of Suchet’s former colleagues who have revealed the reality of working for RT in its lavish purpose-built Moscow newsroom bedecked with state-of-the-art studios and the white and green logo of the broadcaster lining the walls. 

Founded in 2005, RT was tasked specifically by Putin, a former KGB officer, with ending “Anglo-Saxon” hegemony in international broadcasting, and it remains a direct mouthpiece for the Russian government. Its global operations are funded by the Kremlin to the tune of an estimated £200 million a year and include a production base at Millbank Tower near the Houses of Parliament. As shown by its coverage this week, it openly undermines confidence in democracy and seeks to sow discord among Moscow’s enemies. 

Despite being such a public face of the channel, Suchet remains a relatively private figure. He has in recent years deleted his social media accounts, aside from a YouTube channel called On Point which was launched in collaboration with RT in 2020. Colleagues say he was given time off to move to Slovenia to launch the channel, on which Suchet promotes a range of anti-vaxxer, pro-Kremlin and general conspiracy theories; however, he returned to Moscow after it failed to be a ratings success.

Aside from his work as main news anchor, he is also a regular fixture on RT's flagship panel debate show Crosstalk. During one recent episode, Suchet launched into an impassioned defence of Putin being “demonised” by Western governments.

Around the time of his arrival, RT was lavishing money attracting Western journalists to boost its credibility, offering what some have described as “six figure sums” to even relatively junior positions. Suchet arrived with little experience as a news anchor but quickly rose through the ranks. Not least, former colleagues say, because of his surname. The Suchets originally hail from Lithuania and Poirot remains extremely popular in Russia.

“Out in Russia the David Suchet connection was very big and they loved Poirot,” recalls one former colleague. “His name was there and he walked into the job.” Nonetheless they remember him as “charming and not a diva at all”.

A few years into his time at RT he married a co-worker at the station in a ceremony at a Moscow registry office. The reception was held afterwards at his luxury apartment near Red Square. However the marriage reportedly only lasted around 18 months. He is later said to have started a relationship with another co-worker (a member of his production team) although is not thought to have any children. It is not thought that he speaks Russian either – despite its withering view of the West, the RT newsroom is English-speaking.

Suchet had already risen to a prominent position on the channel in 2015 when Nadira Tudor started as a senior news anchor and correspondent. Tudor, who quit RT during the pandemic and now works for News UK in London, described theirs as a purely professional relationship. “There are expats there who love Russia, have a great lifestyle, earn lots of money and for whatever reason are disillusioned with their own countries,” she says. “I don’t know if Rory is one of them.”

Tudor, who previously worked for the BBC, says during her very first meeting with her RT boss she was assured “this is not a propaganda channel”. However she became increasingly concerned with the editorial line she was being asked to adopt. She stresses she had the freedom to disagree with her producers but left in 2020 after feeling increasing pressure from above.

Another senior RT colleague agrees. “When I first started out there there weren’t men in grey suits walking around and eyeing you up,” they recall. “They really did pride themselves on being independent.”

As President Putin’s position has hardened, so too has the channel he helps fund. Tudor says she has been glued to RT this week and been horrified by the skewed way it has presented the invasion. “From the coverage I’ve seen in the past week, it is absolutely blatant. Very telling and clever,” she says. 

Would anything make her go back? “Nothing in the world.”

That, of course, is just one viewpoint. Dressed in his customary tailored suit and tie behind his RT desk this week, Rory Suchet advanced another. “I’m not trying to defend one side or the other here,” he insisted on Thursday. “But it’s important for the media to address both sides.”

Beneath him an on screen news ticker read “Putin: NATO crossed red line with eastward expansion”. At the same time, the Russian President’s amassed forces blasted their way west.