As of: February 13, 2024, 5:15 a.m
By: Bettina Menzel
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Russian President Vladimir Putin interviews former Fox News host Tucker Carlson in the Kremlin on February 8.
© Imago/Gavriil Grigorov/Kremlin Pool/Zuma Wire
In his interview with Tucker Carlson, the Russian president once again reiterated his crude view of history.
According to Kremlin insiders, Putin had a very specific target group in mind.
Moscow – For the first time since the start of the Ukraine war, Russian President Vladimir Putin gave an interview to a Western media representative on Thursday (February 8).
It quickly became clear why the Kremlin boss chose the fired ex-Fox presenter Tucker Carlson as his conversation partner: the American only served as a cue for Putin, let the Russian president ramble for a long time and did not ask any critical questions.
A Kremlin insider now told the Russian opposition newspaper
Meduza
what tactics the Kremlin chief was pursuing with this conversation.
Russian President Putin in an interview with Tucker Carlson: This tactic was apparently behind it
The right-wing anchor Tucker Carlson was fired from
Fox News
last year after a long collaboration .
In his high-ratings evening show, the moderator spread conspiracy theories and agitated against minorities, among other things.
Shortly after being fired from Fox, he announced his own show on the X platform (formerly Twitter).
There he also shared the interview with Putin.
The moderator received a lot of criticism for the conversation.
Carlson was a "vent for Putin's propaganda" and behaved like an "eager puppy" towards the Kremlin chief, it was said.
Numerous Western media outlets had repeatedly asked Putin for an interview, but the requests had all been rejected.
According to Kremlin insiders, there are various reasons why the Russian President agreed to Carlson of all people.
Putin did not want to reach a domestic audience with the conversation, but rather the West.
People in Russia should see the popularity of the interview abroad and would then believe that Putin is “still setting the agenda.” The population would then see how much the Russian president impressed everyone with just one interview,
Meduza
quotes Insider continues.
The information provided by the anonymous source could not be independently verified, but the interview was the number one topic of conversation after it was published.
Kremlin insiders are sure: This is the effect the interview is supposed to have on the American people
In the interview, the Kremlin chief falsely wanted to signal that he was ready to talk to the West.
According to another source close to the government, the message was: Russia is now allied with China, but only because the US leadership pressured Moscow to do so.
The average American should think: “Oh, what our leadership has done!” The interview is useful if you take advantage of the West's reaction and shape the information environment there.
“Everyone there [in the West] is hysterical,” the source continued.
The approval of personalities such as ex-President Donald Trump or Tesla boss Elon Musk would mean millions of viewers, it was said.
Sources close to the Kremlin were unable to explain why Tucker Carlson did not ask the Kremlin chief any critical questions.
“Most likely there was no such target,” a source told
Meduza
.
In addition, Carlson's audience does not expect the moderator to expose Putin, "quite the contrary," it said.
Within the first few hours of publication, millions of people had seen the interview, another source close to the government emphasized.
Reach trumps content: It therefore “doesn’t matter what the questions were.”
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Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov confirmed Sunday that the interview with Tucker Carlson was aimed at justifying Russia's invasion of Ukraine to a U.S. audience.
Americans “traditionally know little” about foreign countries and it is therefore important for Putin to convey his “historical vision,” said Peskov.
Prominent Russian military bloggers also commented that Putin said nothing new in the interview and portrayed the conversation as a Russian attempt to infiltrate mainstream Western media.
The US think tank Institute for the Study of War (ISW) analyzed that Putin remains interested in the complete destruction of Ukraine as a state and shows hostility towards the West.
In terms of content, the president repeated his information campaign and tried to falsely portray Russia as a “reasonable actor”.
The ISW continues to assume that Putin wants to use a ceasefire “to create favorable conditions for the Russian military for a later, more successful war against Ukraine,” it said in the analysis last Thursday.