| "The Vladimir Putin Interview" | |
|---|---|
| The Tucker Carlson Interview episode | |
_17.jpg) Carlson (left) and Putin during the interview | |
| Episodeno. | Episode 74 |
| Presented by | Tucker Carlson |
| Original air date | February 8, 2024 (2024-02-08) |
| Running time | 2:07:18 |
| Guest appearance | |
| Vladimir Putin | |
"The Vladimir Putin Interview" is atelevision interview hosted by the American journalist and political commentatorTucker Carlson with the Russian presidentVladimir Putin. It premiered on theTucker Carlson Network and the social media websiteTwitter on February 8, 2024. It is the first interview to have been conducted between Putin and a Western journalist since theRussian invasion of Ukraine began on February 24, 2022. Most of the conversation between the two men was focused on theRusso-Ukrainian War, as well as the dynamic betweenRussia and NATO since thedissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. Historians have pointed out manyfalse claims in Putin's statements.
Tucker Carlson is an American journalist and political commentator known for promotingconspiracy theories.[1] Carlson said before the interview, "We are not here because we love Vladimir Putin. We are here because we love the United States."[2] Carlson has defended Putin and has promotedpro-Russian disinformation about the war in Ukraine,[3][4] including theUkraine bioweapons conspiracy theory.[5] From 2016 to 2023, Carlson hosted theFox News programTucker Carlson Tonight, a talk show in which he was critical of Ukraine, describing its president since 2019,Volodymyr Zelenskyy, as a "dictator." In April 2023, Carlson was dismissed from Fox News. He then establishedTucker on X. The first episode attributed thedestruction of the Kakhovka Dam to Ukraine.[6]
Putin has institutedrestrictions on press freedom in Russia. In March 2023, the Russian government imprisoned an American journalist,Evan Gershkovich ofThe Wall Street Journal, on charges of espionage. Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Putin had not granted an interview to any Western journalist.[7] TheKremlin Press Secretary,Dmitry Peskov, said Carlson had been allowed an interview because "his position is different," saying, "It's not pro-Russian, not pro-Ukrainian, it's pro-American. It starkly contrasts with the stance of traditionalAnglo-Saxon media."[8]
_13.jpg)
According toIzvestia, Carlson arrived in Moscow on February 3.[9] His presence was reported upon by the Russian state media, which speculated that Carlson may have been in the country to interview Putin. Carlson appeared at theBolshoi Theatre to attend a performance of the balletSpartacus.[10] According to Putin's press secretary,Dmitry Peskov, the interview occurred on February 6.[7]
The interview began with Carlson asking Putin why he had ordered the invasion of Ukraine. Putin replied with a "history lecture" lasting around thirty minutes, giving his vision of thehistory of Eastern Europe from the founding ofKievan Rus' in the 9th century.[11] He said thatPoland "collaborated withHitler" before it wasinvaded by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union in 1939.[12] He said that Poland provoked Nazi Germany to invade because the Poles "went too far" by refusingHitler's demands for Polish territory.[12] Putin justified the current invasion, in part, due to Ukraine'shistorical and ethnic relationship with Russia and Ukraine's alleged lack ofcultural identity and territorial cohesion. He also called Ukraine "an artificial state, established byStalin's will" and asserted that Ukraine'ssouthern andeastern regions "had no historical connection" with it.[13][12] He also blamed the war on Ukraine's alleged refusal to implement theMinsk II agreement.[13]
Putin repeated some statements he made in hisspeech announcing the invasion: that the2014 Ukrainian Revolution was a "CIA-backed coup d'état,"[14] that Ukraine started theDonbas war, that Ukraine's government hasties with neo-Nazis, and thatNATO would threaten Russia through Ukraine.[15][16]
When asked whether Russia had achieved its war aims, Putin replied: "No. We haven't achieved our aims yet because one of them isdenazification." When Carlson asked whether Putin would "be satisfied" with the territory thatRussia currently occupies, Putin avoided the question and referred to his previous answer.[17] Putin indicated that he is ready tonegotiate with the president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who had issued a decree prohibiting negotiations with Putin. Putin urged him to reverse that decision.[18] Putin asserted that Ukraine and its allies would fail in inflicting a "strategic defeat" on Russia.[16] He predicted that if the United States stopped supplying weaponry to Ukraine, the war would "be over within a few weeks"[19] and suggested that the U.S. could signal it wanted to end the war by stopping the aid supply. However, Putin expressed no hope that the Russia–U.S. relationship would regenerate with a new American president following the 2024 elections since, in his view, it is about the mentality of the elites.[20][13]
Putin conveyed to Carlson that Russia has no intention of attacking NATO membersPoland orLatvia unless they attacked Russia.[21]
Putin suggested that theU.S. federal government is secretly controlled by theCentral Intelligence Agency (CIA) rather than its elected officials.[22] He also portrayed Russia as a victim of Western betrayals and blamed the United States and the West for the2022 Nord Stream pipeline sabotage and prolongation of the war, respectively.[20][17][13]
At a point during the interview, he said that he had asked the former U.S. PresidentBill Clinton whether Russia could join the NATO alliance, but that after Clinton spoke with his advisors, he replied to Putin with a "no." Putin stated that he was not welcome there and that, despite "promises," NATO kept expanding eastwards, including to Ukraine, something he said Russia never accepted. He further said that Russia had archived a statement by the CIA admitting that it was supporting opposition groups to Russia in theCaucasus.[13]
At the end of the interview, Carlson asked whether Putin would releaseEvan Gershkovich, an American journalist detained in Russia on charges of espionage, into his custody as an act of goodwill. Putin suggested that he was willing toexchange Gershkovich for a Russian "patriot" who had "eliminated a bandit" in a European capital. This seemed to confirm that Russia was demanding a prisoner swap withVadim Krasikov, a suspected Russian intelligence agent who assassinated aChechen separatist in Berlin in 2019.[15][23] Both men were later released in the2024 Ankara prisoner exchange on August 1.[24]
Various media outlets reported that Putin mademany false claims and misleading statements during the interview and that Carlson failed to challenge him properly. They said that Carlson did not ask Putin aboutalleged Russian war crimes in Ukraine, ongoing Russianmissile strikes on Ukrainian civilian targets, or Putin's repression of political dissent.[15][17][16] Oliver Darcy ofCNN wrote, "Carlson provided Putin a platform to spread his propaganda to a global audience with little to no scrutiny of his claims" and had "even fed into Putin's narratives" in some cases.[22]
The websitePolygraph.info, produced byVoice of America, contested several of Putin's allegations about theRusso-Ukrainian war. It rejected that the 2014 revolution was a "coup," saying that Ukraine's then-PresidentViktor Yanukovych was not overthrown by the military but instead "abandoned his post and fled to Russia amid mass protests." It also said, "Russia started the war on Ukraine in 2014" when itoccupied Crimea and secretly sent military units toseize government buildings in Donbas.[25]
The New York Times'sPeter Baker compared the interview to the objections over monetary assistance to Ukraine in theEmergency National Security Supplemental Appropriations Act by some AmericanRepublican Party politicians.[26] The formerFinancial Times editorLionel Barber — who interviewed Putin in July 2019 — toldPolitico Magazine he believed that Putin leveraged Carlson's sympathy for Russia.[27]
Historians who spoke to the BBC said that Putin's historical narrative was selective and misleading. Rejecting Putin's statement that Ukraine is "artificial," the historianSergey Radchenko said: "Countries are created as a result of a historical process ... If Ukraine is a 'fake country,' then so is Russia."[12] The historianRobert D. English said the interview "showed that it wasn't Russian insecurity, but Putin's personalimperialism, that motivated the war."[28]
ProfessorTimothy Snyder ofYale University, a historian specializing in the history of Central and Eastern Europe, said: "[m]ost of what Putin says about the past is ludicrous."[29] Snyder argues that Putin's "kind of story" brings war since, by Putin's standards, "no borders" of any state would be "legitimate" because anybody might claim foreign territory based on borders of arbitrarily chosen dates in the past.[30] Snyder also says that Putin's "false distinction between natural nations and artificial nations" brings genocide because, in Putin's logic, "artificial" nations have no right to exist.[31] In addition to war and genocide, Snyder analyzes fascism as the third "horror" justified by Putin's thoughts,[32] stating that "Putin's war has been fought with fascist slogans and by fascist means."[33]
In the first three days, the interview had 14 million views onYouTube and 185 million on Twitter.[34][35]
When Carlson announced on February 6 that he would interview Putin, he erroneously stated that no journalist outside of Russia had "bothered to interview" Putin during the war. He also said: "Most Americans have no idea why Putin invaded Ukraine."[26] Some American and European journalists disputed this and said that they had repeatedly been denied interviews with Putin and that some had been expelled or banned from Russia. They also noted that Putin's speeches had been widely covered in American media.[8]
In a podcast conducted withLex Fridman following the interview, Carlson described Putin's justification of "denazification" as "one of the dumbest things I'd ever heard" and likened Putin's conduct as akin to "an over-prepared student."[36]
The former U.S. RepresentativeAdam Kinzinger referred to Carlson as a "traitor," while RepresentativeMarjorie Taylor Greene praised Carlson's decision.[7] The formerU.S. Secretary of StateHillary Clinton and the former CongresswomanLiz Cheney described Carlson as a "useful idiot," a phrase that is frequently erroneously attributed toVladimir Lenin, the first leader of theSoviet Union. OnMSNBC, Clinton again criticized Carlson by stating that some individuals serve as a "fifth column" for Putin, alluding to Carlson.[26][37][38]
Carlson was criticized further afterthe death of the Russian opposition leaderAlexei Navalny in a Russian prison several days after the interview.[39][38]
Dmitry Medvedev, the deputy chairman of theSecurity Council of Russia and former Russian president, commented that Putin "told theWestern world as thoroughly and in detail as possible why Ukraine did not exist, does not exist, and will not exist. Tucker Carlson did not get scared and did not give up."[40][41]
Guy Verhofstadt, theprime minister of Belgium from 1999 to 2008, wrote that theEuropean Union (EU) ought to consider issuing Carlson with a travel restriction should he amplify Putin's message. Peter Stano, a spokesperson for the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy,Josep Borrell, stated that the EU was not considering sanctions against Carlson, despite rumors fromElon Musk and others.[42]
Tsakhia Elbegdorj, the formerpresident of Mongolia, posted on Twitter a map of theMongol Empire, which included and encompassed all of Russia, saying: "After Putin's talk. I found Mongolian historic map. Don't worry. We are a peaceful and free nation."[43][44]
TheRussian opposition activist and journalistYevgenia Albats said that hundreds of Russian journalistswere compelled to flee Russia after the Russian invasion of Ukraine and to go into exile "to keep reporting about the Kremlin's war against Ukraine. The alternative was to go to jail. And now [Tucker Carlson] is teaching us about good journalism, shooting from the $1,000 Ritz suite in Moscow."[45]
Der 54-jährige Carlson ist für die Verbreitung von Verschwörungstheorien bekannt[54-year-old Carlson is known for spreading conspiracy theories]
Most of what Putin says about the past is ludicrous; but even had he said some true things, that would not justify destroying the international order, invading neighbors, and committing genocide.
Putin provides various dates to make various claims. Anyone can do that about any territory. So the first implication of Putin's view is that no borders are legitimate, including the borders of your own country.
In the interview, and in other speeches during the war, Putin depends on a false distinction between natural nations and artificial nations. Natural nations have a right to exist, artificial ones do not.
By 'why' I mean the horror inherent in the kind of story he is telling. It brings war, genocide, and fascism.
Putin's story divides good and evil perfectly. Russia is always right, others are always wrong. Russians can behave like Nazis while calling others "Nazis" and all is well. Russia is a people with a special purpose, resisted by conspiracies. Putin's war has been fought with fascist slogans and by fascist means, with mass propaganda and mass mobilization.
