| "The Vladimir Putin Interview" | |
|---|---|
| The Tucker Carlson Interview episode | |
| Episode no. | Episode 74 |
| Presented by | Tucker Carlson |
| Original air date | February 8, 2024 |
| Guest appearance | |
"The Vladimir Putin Interview" is a television interview hosted by the American journalist and political commentator Tucker Carlson with Russian president Vladimir Putin. It premiered on February 8, 2024, on the Tucker Carlson Network and the social media website X (Twitter). It is the first interview with Putin to be granted to a Western journalist since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. In the first three days, the interview had 14 million views on YouTube and 185 million views on Twitter.[1][2][better source needed]
Tucker Carlson is an American political commentator known for promoting conspiracy theories.[3] Carlson said before the interview that "We are not here because we love Vladimir Putin",[4] but he has often defended Putin and promoted pro-Russian disinformation about the Russian invasion of Ukraine,[5][6] including the Ukraine bioweapons conspiracy theory.[7] From 2016 to 2023, Carlson hosted the Fox News program Tucker Carlson Tonight, a talk show in which he was critical of Ukraine, such as describing Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy as a "dictator". In April 2023, Carlson was dismissed from Fox News. He then established Tucker on X, a talk show on X. The first episode attributed the destruction of the Kakhovka Dam to Ukraine.[8]
Putin has instituted restrictions on press freedom in Russia. In March 2023, the Russian government imprisoned an American journalist, Evan Gershkovich of The Wall Street Journal, on charges of espionage. Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Putin had not granted an interview to any Western journalist.[9] The Kremlin 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 traditional Anglo-Saxon media".[10]
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According to Izvestia, Carlson arrived in Moscow on February 3.[11] 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 the Bolshoi Theatre to attend a performance of the ballet Spartacus.[12] According to Putin's press secretary Dmitry Peskov, the interview occurred on February 6.[9]
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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 the history of Eastern Europe from the founding of Kievan Rus' in the 9th century.[13] He said that the Grand Duchy of Lithuania was really a "Russian-Lithuanian" polity.[14] He called Ukraine "an artificial state" and asserted that Ukraine's southern and eastern regions "had no historical connection" with it.[15] Putin also argued that Poland "collaborated with Hitler" before it was invaded by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union in 1939.[15] He said that Poland provoked Nazi Germany to invade, because the Poles "went too far" by refusing Hitler's demands for Polish territory.[15]
Putin repeated some statements he made in his speech announcing the invasion: that the 2014 Ukrainian Revolution was a Western-backed "coup d'état", that Ukraine started the Donbas War, that Ukraine's government has ties with neo-Nazis, and that NATO would threaten Russia through Ukraine.[16][17]
When asked whether Russia had achieved its war aims, Putin replied: "No. We haven't achieved our aims yet because one of them is denazification". When Carlson asked whether Putin would "be satisfied" with the territory that Russia currently occupies, Putin dodged the question and referred to his previous answer.[18] Putin said that Ukraine and its allies would not succeed in inflicting a "strategic defeat" on Russia.[17] He predicted that if the United States stopped supplying weaponry to Ukraine, the war would "be over within a few weeks".[19]
Putin conveyed to Carlson that Russia has no intention of attacking NATO members Poland or Latvia, unless they attacked Russia.[20]
It was suggested by Putin that the US government is secretly controlled by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), rather than its elected officials.[21] He also blamed the United States for the 2022 Nord Stream pipeline sabotage.[18]
At the end of the interview, Carlson asked whether Putin would release Evan 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 to exchange 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 with Vadim Krasikov, a suspected Russian intelligence agent who murdered a Chechen separatist in Berlin in 2019.[16][22]
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, and said that "most Americans have no idea why Putin invaded Ukraine".[23] This sparked backlash from some American and European journalists, who said they had repeatedly been denied interviews with Putin, and that some had been expelled. They also noted that Putin's speeches had been widely covered in American media.[10]
Various media outlets reported that Putin made many false claims and misleading statements during the interview, and that Carlson failed to properly challenge him. They noted that Carlson did not ask Putin about alleged Russian war crimes in Ukraine, ongoing Russian missile strikes on Ukrainian civilians, or Putin's repression of political dissent.[16][18][17] Oliver Darcy of CNN wrote that "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.[21]
The website Polygraph.info, produced by Voice of America, contested several of Putin's allegations about the Russo-Ukrainian conflict. It rejected that the 2014 revolution was a "coup", saying that Ukraine's then-President Viktor Yanukovych was not overthrown by the military, but instead "abandoned his post and fled to Russia amid mass protests". It also said that "Russia started the war on Ukraine in 2014" when it occupied Crimea and secretly sent military units to seize government buildings in Donbas.[24]
The New York Times's Peter Baker compared the interview to the objections over monetary assistance to Ukraine in the Emergency National Security Supplemental Appropriations Act made by some U.S. Republican Party politicians.[23] Former Financial Times editor Lionel Barber—who interviewed Putin in July 2019— told Politico Magazine he believed that Putin leveraged Carlson's sympathy for Russia.[25]
Historians who spoke to the BBC said that Putin's historical narrative was selective and misleading. Rejecting Putin's statement that Ukraine is "artificial", historian Sergey Radchenko said "countries are created as a result of a historical process ... If Ukraine is a 'fake country', then so is Russia".[15] Historian Robert D. English said the interview "showed that it wasn't Russian insecurity, but Putin's personal imperialism, that motivated the war".[26]
Professor Timothy Snyder of Yale University, a historian specializing in the history of Central and Eastern Europe, said that "[m]ost of what Putin says about the past is ludicrous".[27]
Former U.S. representative Adam Kinzinger referred to Carlson as a "traitor", while representative Marjorie Taylor Greene praised Carlson's decision.[9] The former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton described Carlson as a "useful idiot"; the phrase is erroneously attributed to Vladimir Lenin, the first leader of the Soviet Union. On MSNBC, Clinton furthered her criticism of Carlson by stating there are individuals who serve as a "fifth column" for Putin, alluding to Carlson.[23][28]
The death of prominent Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny in a Russian prison days after the interview triggered a fresh wave of criticism for Tucker. Liz Cheney called Carlson "Putin's useful idiot".[29][30]
Dmitry Medvedev, deputy chairman of the Security Council of Russia and former Russian president, commented that Putin "told the Western 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".[31][32]
Guy Verhofstadt, Prime Minister of Belgium from 1999 to 2008, wrote that the European Union (EU) ought to consider issuing Carlson with a travel restriction should he amplify Putin's message. Peter Stano, a spokesperson for High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borrell, stated that the EU was not considering sanctions against Carlson, despite rumours from Elon Musk and other individuals.[33]
Tsakhia Elbegdorj, the former Prime Minister and later President of Mongolia, tweeted a map of the Mongol 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”.[34][35]
Russian opposition activist and journalist Yevgenia Albats said that hundreds of Russian journalists had to flee Russia after the Russian invasion of Ukraine and 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 $1000 Ritz suite in Moscow."[36]
