Russian President Vladimir Putin has used the interview that former Fox host Tucker Carlson did with him this Tuesday in Moscow to massage Donald Trump and even give him free publicity. “Who will win the elections?” [de noviembre]?”, asks the interviewer. “Donald Trump,” Putin answers without hesitation. Two hours and seven minutes of rhetorical questions, and many monologues, to show off the Kremlin leader and to transmit, on Carlson's part, a somewhat subliminal republican message, in a display of publicity and propaganda that visibly satisfied both parties, judging for the complicity they conveyed, with shared jokes and laughter, as well as questions that gave rise to various conspiracy theories. “Who killed Jeffrey Epstein?” Carlson asked, referring to the millionaire pedophile who committed suicide in a Manhattan jail in 2019 while awaiting trial. “That's easy,” Putin responds laughing in the interview broadcast this Thursday, “it was Hillary [Clinton]”, he said, collecting a crazy theory about a pedophile plot led by the establishment Democrat in Washington that the most ultra Republicans propagated in their day.
The first block was occupied by the war in Ukraine. Both staged what seemed like an agreed joke about the run-up to the invasion of Ukraine, that is, the reasons that led Moscow to invade the neighboring country at the end of February 2022. Carlson asked if Russia had felt threatened. “Why do you think the US could have launched a surprise attack against Russia?” “I never said that… is this a talk show or a serious conversation?” Putin responded to Carlson's complacent laughter: “That's a good one, yes, haha.”
The spark and supposed spontaneity at the start of the talk went out when Putin, invited to explain the reasons for the invasion, launched into a long historical monologue, justifying Moscow's inalienable right over the territory of the neighboring country. A display of history that went back to the 9th century, without giving rise to replicas and that already allowed us to guess the extent of the interview. The review did not deviate one millimeter from what was already stated and defended by the Kremlin: Ukraine is a recent invention as a country, an artificial construction, without historical roots. Overreacting, Carlson appeared surprised at all times, with studied gestures between interest and drowsiness from which it could be inferred that he knew the answers in advance: it is difficult to imagine that he should not present a prior questionnaire.
Putin spent more than an hour with the historical chapter, from primitive Ukrainian Rus to the politics of President Leonid Kuchma or the Maidan of early 2014. “When did you decide [invadir Ucrania]“Asked the Republicans' television preacher. “With the coup [golpe]” on the Maidan, Putin responded, noting that Moscow was not willing to allow “neo-Nazism” next door. One of the Kremlin's confessed pretexts for the “special military operation” – as it officially calls the war – is the “denazification” of the elements that, in its opinion, dominate the “Kiev regime” since the Maidan. And even before, he explained: “After independence [de la URSS], Ukraine began, as some analysts say, to search for its identity. And he couldn't think of anything better than to put the false heroes who allied themselves with Hitler at the head of this identity,” said the Russian president, referring to Stepan Bandera, a historical figure claimed by some of the Maidan protesters.
Another rhetorical question: “Why didn't you defend during your first 22 years as president that Ukraine was not a real country?” Putin: “Soviet Ukraine received a large number of territories that never had anything to do with it, first of all the Black Sea coast” where Crimea is located, invaded and annexed by Moscow in the spring of 2014, just before Donbas will rise against kyiv. These territories “were previously called Novorossiya [Nueva Rusia] when Russia obtained them as a result of the Russo-Turkish wars. Therefore, we have every reason to say that, of course, Ukraine is, in a sense, an artificial state created by the will of Stalin.”
“If NATO expands, everything would be like the Cold War again,” he said, to explain why his rejection of Ukraine's Atlanticist and European orientation since the tumultuous Maidan. “The West fears a strong China much more than a strong Russia, because it has enormous economic potential and overshadows the United States.” Regarding “the threat” posed by NATO, he cited the bombings on Belgrade in 1998, “against all norms of international law and in clear violation of UN principles.” “It was the United States that opened Pandora's box,” he added. He also criticized the US role in Iraq, while boasting several times that he had proposed to the US and NATO a common missile defense system that, he said, the counterparts rejected. “NATO is trying to intimidate and scare its own population with a non-existent Russian threat (…) We have no interest in attacking Poland, Lithuania or whatever neighboring country, none,” he said, laughing. “You can't choose your neighbors just like you can't choose your closest relatives,” he also joked.
Join EL PAÍS to follow all the news and read without limits.
Subscribe
The interview addressed the craziest theories. “Who blew up the [gasoducto] Nord Stream?” “You, of course,” Putin said, pointing his finger at his interviewer. “I was very busy that day, I didn't fly the Nord Stream,” Carlson answered, laughing. “You may have an alibi, but the CIA doesn't have one,” Putin concluded. More laughter, more jokes, from Carlson, who tried to appear journalistic nerve with another question on a plate: “Why doesn't Russia present evidence of the guilt of the United States in the destruction of the Nord Stream to win the propaganda war?” Putin: “It is very difficult to defeat the United States in a propaganda war: you control all the media in the world. We will not obtain results, the whole world is already clear about what happened.”
The second block, as it could not be otherwise, focused on the United States, or rather, on the United States as a target, based on the “bitterness” – this is how he defined it – that Carlson believes he perceives in the Russian president in the face of to the West: “Russia and the West are not lovers,” said Putin, somewhere between convinced and dissatisfied. Regarding the hypothetical existence of contacts with Washington for a solution to the war, the president was clear: “If they really want to stop hostilities, they must stop providing weapons” to Ukraine, he stressed while claiming not to remember the last time he spoke with Biden (“I told him: you are making a mistake” with your support for Ukraine). He then reviewed different topics, from misinformation to artificial intelligence or technological advances, but above and beyond.
To heat up the expectation generated by the interview, recorded on Tuesday and broadcast this Thursday openly on its portal and on by his company Neuralink -, Carlson this week disdained the large conventional media, baselessly claiming that none had requested an interview with the Russian president, and that Western journalists have interviewed the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, on multiple occasions, but have not “met bothered” to interview the Russian president. He highlights the former Fox star's demand for press freedom when Moscow authorities keep two American journalists behind bars (Evan Gershkovich of the newspaper The Wall Street Journal, and Alsosu Kurmasheva of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty), have pushed independent R
ussian media outlets to close, blocked others, and ordered several foreign reporters to leave the country. Numerous media outlets from Western countries have addressed repeated requests for an interview to the Kremlin. All of them have been ignored. “Does Tucker really think that we journalists haven't been trying to interview President Putin every day since his full-scale invasion of Ukraine?” CNN's Christiane Amanpour wrote in X. “It's absurd: we will still ask for an interview, as we have done for years.”
The timing of this informative bombshell – thanks to Elon Musk, the third person most interested in the exclusive and who publicized it by tweeting live during its broadcast – does not seem to be the result of chance. Carlson's visit to Moscow comes as fighting in Ukraine is at a standstill and against a backdrop of growing division in the Republican Party over Putin, the war and aid to Ukraine. Trump has pushed to cut off aid to Ukraine, and the Republican majority that controls the House of Representatives has complied. While many Republicans criticize the Russian president and his invasion, Trump and others have argued that the United States has no interest in helping Ukraine defend itself. Furthermore, Putin's clear toast to Trump's victory in November occurs on the same day that he was informed of Joe Biden's memory limitations, a fact that may further undermine his support among his voters.
Media related to the Kremlin heated up the expectation generated by the interview on social networks, distorting information from the weekly Newsweek according to which Carlson could be sanctioned by the EU for interviewing the Kremlin leader. In statements to the magazine, MEP Guy Verhofstadt, who has asked that the EU consider imposing a “travel ban” on whom he defines as the spokesperson for Donald Trump and Putin, is in favor of this. “As Putin is a war criminal and the EU sanctions all those who help him in this endeavour, it seems logical that the External Action Service will also examine his case,” Verhofstadt told the publication. Pro-Kremlin journalists have attributed to the EU what is nothing more than the point of view of a member of the European Parliament.
Follow all the international information on Facebook and xor in our weekly newsletter.
#Vladimir #Putin #interview #war #Ukraine #Donald #Trump #win #elections #United #States
