Putin mocks Tucker Carlson over his failed attempt to join CIA
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Former Fox News host Tucker Carlson has 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”.
‘The interview was targeted as much at the Russian audience as at the Western one'
Former Ukrainian MP Anton Geraschenko wrote on X after the interview that “Putin’s main message was ‘Russia wants peace, Ukraine and the West don’t’.”
“Let’s not forget that the interview was targeted as much at the Russian audience as at the Western one (Tucker’s arrival to Moscow for the interview was broadcast in Russian media better than Putin’s public appearances),” he noted.
Putin ‘clearly not feeling very confident'
Political scientist Ian Bremmer noted after the interview that the Russian “economy now is smaller than Canada’s, despite having the largest geographic landmass of any country in the world”.
“All these important resources, more nuclear weapons even than the United States. But [Putin’s] clearly not feeling very confident about that. Hence the need to give a huge history lesson to everyone that is willing to listen. And of course, you know, not much Tucker could do there. It’s not like he’s going to suddenly start interrupting the Russian leader,” he said.
He added that it was “really unclear how much of this would appeal to your typical Tucker Carlson audience. I mean, Putin’s talk of a multipolar world is something I find fairly interesting. I do think that the global economic order is increasingly multipolar. The security order is not. It’s still dominated by the United States. But that doesn’t mean the US wants to be the world’s policeman. And especially given the divisions inside the United States, it’s very difficult for it to do so. And it’s failed on many occasions. But I don’t think that that’s something that’s really going to engage a lot of people that are talking about or listening to this interview”.
'Stop supplying weapons and it will be over within weeks'
Putin had a simple demand for the United States: stop supplying weapons to Ukraine.
That rather ominous statement came in response to Carlson asking whether Putin was doing everything he could to find a diplomatic solution, and why he couldn’t simply get on the phone to Joe Biden to end the conflict – which Carlson has repeatedly described as a proxy war between the US and Russia.
“What’s to work out? It’s very simple,” said Putin. “If you want to stop fighting, you need to stop supplying weapons... what’s easier? Why would I call him?
“What should I talk him about? Or beg him for what?
“‘You are going to deliver such and such weapons to Ukraine – oh, I’m afraid, please don’t’? What is there to talk about?”
Although Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky has insisted that his country is not losing the war, some experts are sceptical about his ability to retake the territory still occupied by Russia.
After stunning the world by repulsing Russia’s initial invasion, Ukraine’s long-awaited counteroffensive has stalled, and future support from the US and the European Union is in limbo after objections from sceptical politicians.
Putin doesn't think Ukraine is a real country
Your basic education was in history, as I understand? If you don’t mind, I will take only thirty seconds, or one minute, to give you a little historical background.”
That was how Vladimir Putin, speaking through an interpreter, kicked off what turned out to be a nearly 30-minute lecture on the intertwined history of Russia and Ukraine.
His point? To portray Ukraine as a creation of imperialist powers with no identity of its own and no real claim to sovereignty. (Never mind that Russia itself was created by Eastern Europeans colonising vast swathes of Eurasia.)
Starting with the election of Prince Rurik to the throne of Novgorod in 862 AD, he described how successive empires, including the Soviet Union, shaped the modern boundaries of Ukraine by transferring land from Poland, Hungary, Romania, and Crimea.
“So,” Putin concluded, “we have every reason to affirm that Ukraine is an artificial state that was shaped at Stalin’s will.”
Carlson quickly pushed back, asking the president if he thought that Hungary had the right to take its land back from Ukraine, or that other nations have the right to return to their 17th-century borders.
After a long pause, Putin replied that he wasn’t sure – but that, given the nature of Stalin’s repressive regime, it would be “understandable” if they tried.
He then told a personal anecdote about taking a road trip through the Soviet Union in the early 1980s and encountering Hungarian Ukrainians, who still spoke Hungarian and considered themselves Hungarians.
At least, he clarified, he had never told Hungarian president Viktor Orban to his face that he could annex any part of Ukraine.
Putin’s history lesson was ‘something you do when you’re insecure’
“Substantively, we learned really nothing new. Putin going on a very long history lesson with tangents, going back to Genghis Khan and the Roman Empire. And maybe we should talk about the fact that the Roman Empire is on Putin’s mind, too, just like so many people on Twitter,” he added. “But that if anything was going to lose a large percentage of your audience, that was almost guaranteed to do so.”
“I remember so many trips to Beijing and you’d meet with Chinese leaders, and the first 20 minutes were about Chinese leadership and rightful place in the world back in the 15th century. That’s something you do when you’re insecure,” he said. “As the Chinese were doing better and as they were becoming a larger economy and feeling more comfortable in the rest of the world, and that more countries had to listen to them, they did less of that.”
Softball questions, conspiracy theories and a 30-minute history lesson: Tucker Carlson's strange interview with Vladimir Putin
“I beg your pardon. Can you tell us what period...? I’m losing track of where in history we are,” said the former Fox News host, who had been listening to Putin’s words with an expression of deepening vexation.
“It was in the 13th century,” said the Russian president matter-of-factly.
The exchange was only one of many odd moments in Carlson’s much-trailed meeting with the ex-KGB strongman, who has dominated his country’s politics for more than two decades and is now virtually a dictator.
Political scientists says Putin interview comes as war ‘not going very well for the Ukrainians'
Ian Bremmer, a political scientist and the president of Eurasia Group, a political risk research and consulting firm, said after Tucker Carlson’s interview with Vladimir Putin that “this is now entering almost the third year of war when the Russians have invaded Ukraine, it is increasingly not going very well for the Ukrainians and therefore not very well for the United States and its allies”.
“And that means that the timing of this interview is important, especially in the context of a very heated, very divisive US election, when increasingly support for Ukraine is becoming a matter of political difference. And it wasn’t six months ago, but it certainly is becoming so very rapidly now,” he added.
He argued that Carlson “was invited because he is someone that historically has said that if he’s on a side, he’s not on the side of Ukraine, he’s on the side of Russia, and he’s given very favorable interviews with people that are ideologically aligned with Putin, like Viktor Orbán in Hungary, the one European leader of a country that has consistently taken Putin’s side more closely than he has the Americans and the Europeans”.
Putin mocked over claim Poland forced Hitler to invade
Putin mocks Tucker Carlson over his failed attempt to join CIA
Mr Putin said that the “entire Ukrainian economy” used to be based on trade with Russia.
“The cooperation ties between the enterprises were very close since the times of the Soviet Union. One enterprise there used to produce components to be assembled both in Russia and Ukraine and vice versa. There used to be very close ties,” he said.
“A coup d’etat was committed, although, I shall not delve into details now as I find doing it inappropriate, the US told us, ‘Calm Yanukovich down and we will calm the opposition. Let the situation unfold in the scenario of a political settlement’. We said, ‘Alright. Agreed. Let’s do it this way’. As the Americans requested us, Yanukovich did use neither the Armed Forces, nor the police, yet the armed opposition committed a coup in Kiev. What is that supposed to mean? ‘Who do you think you are?’, I wanted to ask the then-US leadership,” he said.
“With the backing of whom?” Mr Carlson asked.
“With the backing of CIA, of course.”
At that point, Mr Putin jabbed at the right-wing media figure for his own past efforts applying to work for the CIA.
“The organisation you wanted to join back in the day, as I understand,” he said.
“Maybe we should thank God they didn’t let you in. Although, it is a serious organisation. I understand. My former vis-à-vis, in the sense that I served in the First Main Directorate – Soviet Union’s intelligence service. They have always been our opponents. A job is a job.”
Government warned UK could become ‘back door’ to Russian threats as foreign companies snap up British firms
They call for ministers to be notified of proposed investments which would affect media freedom, access to the sensitive data of individual, cybersecurity and critical supply chains.
MPs have attacked the proposed UAE-backed takeover of the Telegraph newspaper group, expressing concerns about foreign state ownership and warning that it is impossible to “separate sheikh and state”.
Liam Byrne, the chair of the Commons Business and Trade sub-committee, said it was “vital that we do not let our country become a “back door” through which our adversaries acquire capabilities that imperil the collective security of either us or our NATO Allies.”
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2024-02-09 22:15:32Z
CBMibmh0dHBzOi8vd3d3LmluZGVwZW5kZW50LmNvLnVrL25ld3Mvd29ybGQvYW1lcmljYXMvdHVja2VyLWNhcmxzb24tcHV0aW4tZnVsbC1pbnRlcnZpZXctdmlkZW8tbmV3cy1iMjQ5MzU1NS5odG1s0gEA
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