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In an interview with Carlson, Putin announces historic territorial claims to Ukraine.
He dominated with half-truths.
The interview causes anger.
Kiev – Former Fox News
host Tucker Carlson
thought Vladimir Putin went to war in Ukraine because he feared an imminent attack by the United States or NATO.
After a two-hour interview with the Russian president in Moscow, Carlson said he was "shocked" to learn that Putin invaded for a different reason: "Vladimir Putin believes that Russia has a historic claim to parts of Ukraine," he said he.
"What you're about to see seemed to us to be sincere," Carlson told his Internet viewers before the interview aired on Thursday evening: "A sincere expression of what he thinks." For Carlson and the American audience that the Kremlin is with who wanted to obtain consent for the interview, this may have been a surprise.
But for Ukrainians who have had to live with Putin's denial of Ukraine's right to exist as a separate country from Russia for more than two decades, the interview sparked only anger.
Accusations after Putin interview harsh: Carlson a Putin henchman and warmonger
For them, perhaps the only shock was that conservative American voters might fall for Putin's litany of lies, half-truths and distortions, including claims that he wanted to negotiate an end to the war with Washington.
This would mean that Ukraine would be forced to give up its territory.
Ukrainians accused Carlson of being a Kremlin stooge and providing a platform for a warmongering dictator strategically aimed at influencing this year's U.S. presidential election.
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“The only thing that really triggers certain reactions is that Putin, a war criminal with an arrest warrant from the Hague Tribunal, is being interviewed instead of being questioned by an investigator, as he should,” Oleksiy Danilov said.
He is Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine.
“This is the only thing he should do in the remaining days of his life, no matter how many he has left.”
Republicans close to Putin: Propaganda about the Ukraine war resonates with many
However, Ukrainians were not the Kremlin's target audience.
Putin's message, including a 30-minute history lecture peppered with falsehoods, was aimed at Carlson's target audience: Republican supporters of former President Donald Trump, many of whom expressed admiration for the Russian leader and questioned U.S. support for Ukraine have.
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The interview with Putin lasted 127 minutes.
A good quarter of it was a pseudo-historical excursion by Putin.
© picture alliance/dpa/Zuma Press Wire |
Tucker Carlson Network
Putin seemed to want to convince them that Ukraine rightly belongs to Russia and that President Biden and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky are prolonging the war.
Whether he succeeded remains to be seen.
But it is already clear that Putin dominated the interview from start to finish.
Putin better prepared than Carlson – Critical questions?
None
Carlson made no mention of the war crimes allegations against Putin, and at times the moderator seemed simply overwhelmed.
Like when, during Putin's history lecture, he tried to keep up with a list of dates and unknown names, like the Scandinavian Varangian prince Rurik - who dates back to the 10th century.
Putin, a trained KGB agent, easily dodged Carlson's occasional attempts to elicit a direct answer.
“Do we want to have a serious conversation or a show?” Putin snapped at one point after Carlson tried to get him to say he invaded Ukraine because he thought NATO might launch a surprise attack .
(Carlson noted that these were Putin's actual words justifying his invasion in 2022 - one of the few times he tried to get in on the Russian leader).
Putin also appeared better prepared than Carlson, mentioning, to the former
Fox News
host's apparent surprise, the fact that Carlson had studied history and tried to join the CIA - but failed.
“We should thank God that they didn't accept you, even though it is a serious organization, as I know,” Putin said, in a kind of reference to Carlson.
Putin's remarks were translated into English and a transcript was posted on Carlson's website.
Putin's main argument: Russia as a victim of the West in the Ukraine war
However, aside from subtle jibes, Putin used every question to reinforce his main argument: Russia was the injured party, a victim of repeated false promises from the West.
Nevertheless, Putin said Moscow was ready to negotiate an end to the war - albeit with the United States, underscoring his claim that the Ukrainian government is an illegitimate puppet of the West.
President Biden has repeatedly said that Ukraine must decide if and when it wants to make peace.
"Don't you have anything better to do?" Putin asked when asked about the possibility of sending US troops to Ukraine - a prospect that, contrary to Carlson's question, was never discussed in Washington.
“Wouldn’t it be better to negotiate with Russia and conclude an agreement,” Putin said, adding: “Russia will fight for its interests to the end.”
Putin asserts willingness to negotiate in the Ukraine war - hoping for Trump's success
“We are ready for this dialogue,” Putin told Carlson.
However, the alleged willingness to negotiate stands in stark contrast to Russia's long insistence that only a full surrender by Ukraine, including a large ceding of the occupied territories, will end the war.
However, this was just one of Putin's numerous misrepresentations during the interview.
For example, he also claimed that Russian troops had withdrawn from attempting to capture Kiev as part of a peace agreement that was later violated by Ukraine.
In reality, the Russian troops were defeated and retreated after suffering heavy losses.
But some Putin supporters said they believed his message would resonate in America, helping Trump win in November and encouraging Republicans in Congress to continue blocking any new aid to Ukraine.
Experts warn: Putin interview could help Trump in US elections
“The result of Putin's interview with Carlson could be that a few million Americans say, 'Yeah, so Putin is pro-peace.
And Trump is for peace.
Only Biden and Zelensky are for war,” said political scientist Sergei Markov, who is close to the Kremlin.
“So we should vote for Trump and against Biden, then there will be peace and no threat of nuclear war.”
Markov added that as a result of the interview, "Trump will convincingly win the election and become President of the United States, Trump and Putin will quickly agree on peace in Ukraine, and the war will be over."
“Denazification” in the Ukraine war – one of many false claims in the Putin interview
Putin also told Carlson that a key reason for the invasion and one of Moscow's main goals was the "denazification" of Ukraine - part of Putin's ongoing false claim that Kiev was controlled by Nazis.
Ukraine is a democracy and Zelensky, who was overwhelmingly elected president in 2014, is of Jewish descent, as are other top officials.
According to many analysts, Putin's real goal is to overthrow Zelensky in favor of a Russian puppet regime.
The rest of the interview contained a number of Kremlin falsehoods or half-truths, including Putin's claim that "NATO and US military bases appeared on the territory of Ukraine and posed a threat to us."
In fact, before the invasion, NATO had rebuffed Ukraine's efforts to join the alliance, largely out of concern about angering Russia.
Truth and lies in one: Putin's propaganda strategy
“The Kremlin’s propaganda strategy for decades has been to mix the truth with complete untruths,” tweeted Russian opposition figure Mikhail Khodorkovsky.
“That’s what made the invasion of Ukraine possible.”
The centerpiece of the interview was Putin's lengthy talk covering more than 1,000 years of history, from the founding of Kievan Rus' - a state that formed the basis for modern Ukraine, Russia and Belarus - to the present.
Russian President Vladimir Putin in an interview with former Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson.
© Gavriil Grigorov/Kremlin Pool/Imago
Although he initially promised to speak on the subject for just 30 seconds, the response took almost half an hour - all to support Putin's argument that Ukrainians are actually Russians living "on the edge" of the Russian Empire.
“Torrent of idiocy, lies and heresy” – Putin’s history excursion in an interview
However, Putin's version of Ukraine's history - as well as the history of Russia, Belarus, Lithuania, Poland and Hungary - was riddled with inaccuracies, experts said.
This included his false claim that Poland had “urged” Nazi Germany to attack them and start World War II.
"It only took Putin a few hours to say, 'I have to destroy Ukraine because I have no idea what Russia is,'" wrote Timothy Snyder, a Yale historian who has written extensively about Ukraine and Eastern Europe , on X
Perhaps he was not interested in accuracy but rather in showering viewers with a tsunami of facts and data and convincing them of Putin's apparent erudition with references to Kievan Rus' or the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.
The Ukrainians said Carlson was irresponsible and ineffective as an interviewer.
“The propagandist Carlson is spreading a stream of idiotism, lies and heresy,” former Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatseniuk wrote on Facebook, adding: “Freedom of speech and freedom to lie should not be confused, Comrade Carlson.”
Ebel reported from London and Ilyushina from Riga, Latvia.
Robyn Dixon and Natalia Abbakumova in Riga contributed to this report.
To the authors
Mary Ilyushina
, a foreign affairs reporter at The Washington Post, covers Russia and the region.
She began her career in independent Russian media before joining CNN's Moscow bureau in 2017 as a field producer.
She has been working for The Post since 2021.
She speaks Russian, English, Ukrainian and Arabic.
Francesca Ebel
is the Washington Post's Russia correspondent.
Before joining the Post in 2022, Ebel was an Associated Press correspondent in Tunis.
David L. Stern
has worked for news organizations in Russia, Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, the Middle East and Central Asia.
He has lived in Ukraine since 2009 and reported on the Maidan Revolution in 2014, the war in the east of the country and the Russian invasion in 2022.
We are currently testing machine translations. This article was automatically translated from English into German.
This article was first published in English on February 11, 2024 at the “Washingtonpost.com” - as part of a cooperation, it is now also available in translation to readers of the IPPEN.MEDIA portals.