Putin calls Ukraine an ‘artificial state shaped at Stalin’s will’
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Former Fox News host Tucker Carlson released his interview with Russian President Vladimir Putin, who started with a long diatribe on Russian history and its relationship with Ukraine.
The two-hour, seven-minute interview was recorded on 6 February and released in full shortly before 6pm ET on Thursday. Carlson travelled to Moscow for Putin’s first interview with a Western media figure since the invasion of Ukraine began in February 2022.
Putin repeated his argument that Ukraine wasn’t a real country which was shaped by the “will” of Soviet leader Josef Stalin.
When Carlson requested that jailed Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich be allowed to return to the US with Carlson and his crew as a show of “goodwill” from Putin, the Russian leader said that his “goodwill” had run out, complaining about the lack of reciprocity from the West.
Asked why he doesn’t call President Joe Biden and work out a solution in Ukraine, Putin asked: “What’s there to work out?”
“Stop supplying weapons and it will be over within weeks,” he added.
Putin also claimed that peace talks had at one point “reached a very high stage of coordination of positions ... they were almost finalized”.
In video: Putin repeatedly claims Evan Gershkovich received classified information
Putin repeatedly claims Evan Gershkovich received classified information
Vladimir Putin claimed that jailed American journalist Evan Gershkovich had been caught “red-handed” with classified information that he had obtained from one of his sources in a clandestine manner. In a conversation with right-wing commentator Tucker Carlson, the Russian president denied that the Wall Street Journal reporter was innocent of the espionage charges for which he remains imprisoned. The newspaper and other US news outlets strongly deny any wrongdoing by Mr Gershkovich. They say his activities fell strictly under the umbrella of legitimate journalism. “He was caught red-handed when he was receiving this information,” Putin told Mr Carlson.
Putin claims ‘Ukraine is an artificial state that was shaped at Stalin’s will’
Interrupting Putin’s history monologue, Carlson asked: “You obviously have encyclopedic knowledge of this region, but why didn’t you make this case for the first 22 years as president that Ukraine wasn’t a real country?”
“The Soviet Union was given a great deal of territory that had never belonged to including the Black Sea region, received Bucha at some point, when Russia received them as an outcome of the Russo-Turkish wars, they were called New Russia ... but that does not matter. What matters is that Lenin the founder of the Soviet state ... established Ukraine that way,” Putin said.
“For decades the Ukrainian Soviet Republic developed as part of the USSR. And for unknown reasons, again, the Bolsheviks were engaged in Ukrainian causation. It was not merely because the Soviet leadership was composed to a great extent of those originating from Ukraine. Rather, it was explained by the general policy of indigenisation pursued by the Soviet Union,” the Russian leader added.
“Same things were done in other Soviet republics. This involves promoting national languages and national cultures, which is not a bad in principle,” he said. “That is how the Soviet Ukraine was created. After World War Two Ukraine received in addition to the lands that had belonged to Poland before the war, both of the lands that had previously belonged to Hungary and Romania – So Romania and Hungary had some of their lands taken away and given to the Soviet Ukraine, and they still remain part of Ukrainian.”
“So in this sense, we have every reason to affirm that Ukraine is an artificial state that was shaped at Stalin’s will,” Putin claimed.
In November 2022, Olesya Khromeychuk, a historian and the director of the Ukrainian Institute London, wrote in The New York Times: “This historical experience — of statelessness and struggle, repressive external rule and hard-won independence — has shaped Ukraine into the nation we see today: opposed to imperialism, united in the face of the enemy and determined to protect its freedom. For the people of Ukraine, freedom is not some lofty ideal. It is imperative for survival.”
In May 2022, US historian Stephen Schlesinger wrote in PassBlue: “Seven years before his death, in preparation for the Soviet Union joining the newly formed United Nations, Stalin advanced the proposition that Ukraine was an independent state.”
“His pronouncement came about during the conference that established the UN in San Francisco in the spring of 1945. There, Stalin demanded that Ukraine be admitted to the body as a separate, distinct nation with all the rights and privileges that come with full membership, including its own ambassador and participation as a member state in all UN sessions,” the historian added. “Stalin’s stance initially grew out of the Dumbarton Oaks conclave, which was held in Washington a year earlier, where the four sponsoring nations of the UN — Britain, the Soviet Union, the United States and China — met to draft the UN Charter.”
Humanity needs to think about advances in genetics and AI: Putin
Vladimir Putin said the world was changing faster than during the collapse of the Roman Empire, mentioning advances in genetic research and artificial intelligence. He said geneticists could create a “superman” and quipped that Elon Musk had put a chip in a human brain.
But he said that humanity needed to think about what to do about the advances in genetics and artificial intelligence and suggested the nuclear arms control treaties of the Cold War could be a guide.
“When there arises an understanding that the boundless and uncontrolled development of artificial intelligence or genetics or some other modern trends, cannot be stopped, that these researches will still exist just as it was impossible to hide gunpowder from humanity... when humanity feels a threat to itself, to humanity as a whole, then, it seems to me, there will come a period to negotiate at the inter-state level on how we will regulate this,” Mr Putin said.
What did Putin say about war with Ukraine?
After a half-hour lecture on the history of Russia and Ukraine dating back to dawn of Slavic history in 862, Vladimir Putin told Tucker Carlson that Russia and Ukraine almost agreed to a peace deal in Istanbul shortly after the full-scale war began in 2022 but that it was turned down by Ukraine at the behest of the West, specifically Boris Johnson, then British prime minister.
He suggested the West and Ukraine think about peace.
In this pool photograph distributed by Russian state agency Sputnik, Russia’s president Vladimir Putin chairs a meeting with the Presidential Council for Science and Education via video link in Moscow on 8 February 2024
“Wouldn’t it be better to come to an agreement with Russia? To agree, understanding the situation that is today, understanding that Russia will fight for its interests to the end, and, understanding this, actually return to common sense, start respecting our country, its interests and look for some solutions?”
And Russia? “We are ready for this dialogue.”
Mr Putin questioned why the United States needed to spend so much on arming Ukraine for a war he cast in some ways similar to a “civil war”.
“Does the United States need this? Why? It is thousands of kilometres away from its territory! Don’t you have anything else to do?” Mr Putin said. He said there were mercenaries from the United States, Poland and Georgia fighting for Ukraine.
In video: Putin repeats de-Nazification claim, meanders around Carlson questions
EU denies claim Tucker Carlson faces sanction over Putin interview
Peter Stano, a spokesperson for EU foreign policy boss Josep Borrell, told the media on Thursday that “It’s not up to us to try to pre-empt or speculate whether someone will be proposed by a member state or group of member states to be put on the sanctions list”.
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Putin says if US stops giving Ukraine weapons the war will be over ‘in weeks’
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Putin repeats ‘nonsense’ claim Boris Johnson scuppered efforts to end Ukraine invasion
During a highly anticipated sit-down interview with former Fox News commentator Tucker Carlson, the Russian president said, via a translator, that a “huge document” had been prepared and approved by the head of the Ukranian delegation, before Mr Johnson had stepped in and “dissuaded” Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky.
“He put his signature and then he himself said, ‘we were ready to sign it and the war would have been over long ago’. However, Prime Minister Johnson came talk to us out of it, and we’ve missed that chance.”
Mike Bedigan report:
Tucker Carlson fawns over ‘beautiful’ Moscow as he jokes about ‘betraying’ US
He continued: “Why do I feel guilty, like I’m betraying my country for saying that, I’m not, I love America. This is a really nice city. And I don’t care. It’s true. So thank you.”
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2024-02-09 08:20:47Z
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