Vladimir Putin relished being interviewed by American journalist Tucker Carlson, who doesn’t seem to know much about Russia, Ukraine or the war. The old autocrat turned a two-hour interview into a monologue and spent most of it talking about a fictionalised history of Ukraine. In one of the rare moments when Carlson dared to interrupt Putin and ask about the war, Putin said he didn’t start it. ‘This is an attempt to stop it. We have not achieved our aims yet, because one of them is denazification,’ he said, and then continued to talk about neo-Nazi Ukrainians.

Putin said he didn’t start the war

Maybe, that was ‘the truth’ Carlson had promised to reveal in a teaser to the interview, saying that it would open the eyes of the Americans and offer a different angle than the western media had previously explored. Putin kept repeating the tiresome Russian rhetoric that his country had been a ‘victim’ of Nato expansionism, explaining that he had to annex Crimea, invade Donbas in 2014 and then start a full-scale war in 2022 to protect the Russian people. It was a defensive campaign, he said.

Putin also avoided answering Carlson’s question about whether he was satisfied with the territories he had occupied so far. He claimed to want ‘to achieve a resolution to the situation in Ukraine through negotiations’, but complained that Kyiv is proposing conditions Russia cannot agree to. Putin didn’t specify which conditions exactly he objects to, but Kyiv has demanded that the Russian army leave all of Ukraine’s lands and that the country must pay reparations.

‘Shall we end here or is there anything else?’ Putin asked at the end of the interview. Carlson, looking lost and exhausted, answered: ‘No, I think that’s great.’ But the interview was far from great in the eyes of Ukrainians: there are many questions Carlson should have asked Putin but didn’t.

QOSHE - What Tucker Carlson should have asked Vladimir Putin - Svitlana Morenets
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What Tucker Carlson should have asked Vladimir Putin

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09.02.2024

Vladimir Putin relished being interviewed by American journalist Tucker Carlson, who doesn’t seem to know much about Russia, Ukraine or the war. The old autocrat turned a two-hour interview into a monologue and spent most of it talking about a fictionalised history of Ukraine. In one of the rare moments when Carlson dared to interrupt Putin and ask about the war, Putin said he didn’t start it. ‘This is an attempt to stop it. We have not achieved our aims yet, because one........

© The Spectator


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