Former Fox News host believes Russia went to war because it has a historic claim to parts of Ukraine

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. Instead, after a two-hour interview with the Russian president in Moscow, Carlson said he was “surprised” to learn that Putin invaded for a different reason: “Vladimir Putin believes that Russia has a historical claim to parts of Ukraine.” , he explained.

“What you are about to see seems sincere to us,” Carlson told his Internet users before the interview aired Thursday night: “A sincere expression of what he thinks.”

For Carlson and the American audience the Kremlin intended to reach by agreeing to the interview, that may have come as a surprise. But for Ukrainians, who have lived for more than two decades with Putin denying Ukraine’s right to exist as a separate country from Russia, the interview provoked only fury.

For them, perhaps the only surprise was that conservative American voters could fall for Putin’s litany of lies, half-truths and distortions, including his claim that he wants to negotiate with Washington to end the war, which would mean forcing Ukraine to give up its territory. Ukrainians accused Carlson of being a pawn of the Kremlin, giving a platform to a warmongering dictator with strategic designs to influence this year’s US presidential election.

“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,” said Oleksiy Danilov, Secretary of Security and National Defense of Ukraine. “That’s the only thing he should do in the days he has left to live, no matter how many he has left.”

However, Ukrainians were not the Kremlin’s target audience. Putin’s message, which included a 30-minute history lecture riddled with falsehoods, was aimed at Carlson’s demographic: Republican supporters of former President Donald Trump, many of whom have expressed admiration for the Russian leader and questioned support from the United States to Ukraine.

Putin seemed eager to convince them that Ukraine rightfully belongs to Russia and that President Biden and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky are the ones prolonging the war. It remains to be seen if he succeeded. But what is already clear is that Putin dominated the interview from start to finish.

Carlson made no mention of the war crimes allegations against Putin, and at times the presenter seemed out of his depth, struggling to keep up with Putin’s history lecture, with its list of unknown dates and names, such as the Varangian prince. Rurik from Scandinavia. dating back to the 10th century.

Putin, a trained KGB agent, easily evaded Carlson’s infrequent attempts to get a direct answer.

“Are we going to have a serious talk or a show?” Putin exploded at one point, after Carlson tried to pressure Putin into saying he invaded Ukraine because he felt NATO might launch a surprise attack. (Carlson noted that these were Putin’s actual words to justify invading him in 2022, one of the few times he attempted to hold the Russian leader to the fire.)

Putin also proved better prepared than Carlson, bringing up, to the former Fox News host’s apparent surprise, the fact that Carlson was a history major in college and had tried (unsuccessfully) to join the CIA.

“We should thank God they didn’t let you in, although I understand it is a serious organization,” Putin said, in what appeared to be a dig at Carlson. Putin’s comments were translated into English and a transcript was posted on Carlson’s website.

Subtle jibes aside, however, Putin used each question to drive home his main points: that Russia was the aggrieved party, the victim of repeated false promises by the West. Despite this, Putin insisted, Moscow was willing to negotiate and end the war, but with the United States, underscoring his insistence that the Ukrainian government is an illegitimate puppet of the West. President Biden has repeatedly said that Ukraine must decide when, or whether, to make peace.

“Don’t you have anything better to do?” Putin asked in response to a question about the possibility of US troops being sent to Ukraine, a prospect that, contrary to Carlson’s question, has never been on the table in Washington.

“Wouldn’t it be better to negotiate with Russia, reach an agreement?” Putin said, adding: “Russia will fight for its interests to the end.”

“We are ready for this dialogue,” Putin told Carlson.

However, the alleged willingness to negotiate contrasts sharply with Russia’s long insistence that only Ukraine’s complete capitulation, including a broad handover of occupied territory, will end the war.

But it was also just one of Putin’s many misrepresentations during the interview. He also suggested, for example, that Russian troops refrained from trying to conquer kyiv as part of a peace agreement, which was later violated by Ukraine. In fact, the Russian forces were defeated and retreated after suffering heavy losses.

Still, some of Putin’s supporters said they believed their message would be heard in the United States, helping Trump win in November and encouraging congressional Republicans to continue blocking any new aid to Ukraine.

Interview with President of Russia, Vladimir Putin.
“The result of Putin’s interview with Carlson could be that a few million Americans say, ‘Yes, so Putin is for peace.’ And Trump is for peace. Only Biden and Zelensky are in favor of war,’” said pro-Kremlin political analyst Sergei Markov. “So we should vote for Trump and against Biden and then there will be peace and there will be no threat of nuclear war.”

Markov added that as a result of the interview, “Trump will win the election convincingly and become president of the United States, Trump and Putin will quickly agree on peace in Ukraine and the war will end.”

Putin also told Carlson that one of the main reasons for the invasion, and one of Moscow’s main ongoing goals, is the “denazification” of Ukraine, part of Putin’s continued false accusation that Kiev is controlled by the Nazis. Ukraine is a democracy and Zelensky, who was overwhelmingly elected president in 2014, is of Jewish descent, as are other senior officials. Putin’s real goal, many analysts say, is to overthrow Zelensky in favor of a Russian puppet regime.

The rest of the interview contained a number of falsehoods or half-truths from the Kremlin, including Putin’s insistence that “NATO and US military bases began to appear on the territory, and Ukraine created threats to us.” In fact, before the invasion NATO had rejected Ukraine’s efforts to join the alliance, largely for fear of antagonizing Russia.

“Mixing truth with complete falsehoods has been the Kremlin’s propaganda strategy for decades,” tweeted Russian opposition figure Mikhail Khodorkovsky. “It is what made the invasion of Ukraine possible.”

The focus of the interview was Putin’s long lecture that spanned more than 1,000 years of history, from the creation of Kyivan Rus, a state that laid the foundations of modern Ukraine, Russia and Belarus, to the present.

Although he initially promised to speak only 30 seconds on the topic, the response lasted almost half an hour, all to demonstrate that Ukrainians are actually Russians living “on the edge” of the Russian empire.

However, Putin’s version of Ukraine’s history – as well as that of Russia, Belarus, Lithuania, Poland and Hungary – was riddled with inaccuracies, experts said. This included his false claim that Poland “pressured” Nazi Germany into attacking it and starting World War II.

“Putin just took a couple of hours to say, ‘I must destroy Ukraine because I have no idea what Russia is,’” Timothy Snyder, a Yale historian who has written extensively about Ukraine and Eastern Europe, posted on X.

The goal of his ramblings may not have been accuracy, but rather to overwhelm viewers with a tsunami of facts and dates, and to impress them with Putin’s apparent erudition with references to Kyivan Rus or the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.

The Ukrainians said Carlson was an irresponsible and ineffective interviewer.

“Propagandist Carlson” spread “a stream of idiocy, lies and heresies,” former Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk wrote on Facebook, adding: “Freedom of speech and freedom to lie should not be confused, Comrade Carlson.”

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