Photo Credit- Canadian Broadcasting Corporation
On February 6, 2024, former Fox News primetime anchor Tucker Carlson was about to accomplish the unthinkable- a sit-down interview with Russian President Vladimir Putin. After Putin made the fateful decision to begin a military operation directed at toppling the Ukrainian government in Kyiv, the idea of even visiting Russia, let alone meeting the big man in the Kremlin seems pure fantasy for most Americans. However, Tucker Carlson is not your average American citizen. He is a well-known media personality with a penchant for questioning establishment media narratives, including around the war in Ukraine. Carlson has also given interviews to Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban and Argentine President Javier Milei. The last Western Journalist to interview the Russian President was CNBC energy correspondent Hadley Gamble in October 2021. Four months later, Putin crossed the Rubicon.
As someone with a critical interest in the history and geopolitics of Eastern Europe, I had been looking forward to the Carlson-Putin sit-down ever since the Kremlin confirmed the interview had taken place and would be released to the public. I even made a Bingo game of the exact talking points I expected Putin to voice. Finally, the interview began. Right away I noticed the usual bravado with which Carlson attacks Western elites and woke progressives was nowhere to be found. Rather, Tucker Carlson in the Kremlin seemed a man far outside his comfort zone. Considering Putin’s escalating body count, highlighted by Alexander Litvinenko, Boris Nemtsov, Yevgeny Prigozhin, and now Alexei Navalny, Carlson’s caution was certainly warranted.
With Putin doing most of the talking, Carlson and his viewers were forced to begin the anticipated interview with a laborious history lecture beginning with the arrival 9th century Viking warlord Rurik to rule the principality of Novgorod. By the time Putin had arrived at the Mongol Empire, most viewers were either checked out or deeply confused. Not this one. While I can defer a rant about Americans’ lacking education in world history for another day, I can offer some corrections to Putin’s narrative of history. The ultimate conclusion of Putin’s narrative: Ukraine not only has no right to exist as a state, but Ukraine in fact does not exist at all and is merely an artificial construct invented by Poland, Austria, and the United States.
Vladimir Putin clearly hates Poland. Poland and its sinister plots to destroy Orthodox culture are, according to the Russian president, the reason why Ukrainian identity exists in the first place. In Putin’s telling, the medieval Polish Szlachta (nobility) first created an artificial new identity in the western lands of the Kievan Rus. This nationality would be called Ukrainian, which in the Russian language means “at the edge.” The Polish version of the story is quite different, as one would expect. The land that is now called Ukraine was indeed controlled by first the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and then by the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (PLC). Rather than through a vast Anti-Russian conspiracy, the inhabitants of the Ukrainian lands diverged from Mongol-Muscovite despotism and adopted the classical liberal values that embodied the PLC. I am inclined to believe that the Polish telling is the correct one- not Putin’s.
After Poland, Putin then went on to blame the Austrian Hapsburgs for further encouraging Ukrainian identity. Finally, Putin lists his decades of grievances with the US government, which he is convinced seeks his violent overthrow a la Gaddafi. Putin’s reasoning- by turning these Little Russians (as many Russians call Ukrainians) against the Great Russians, these Western powers would forever ensure Russia is weak and divided. In the Russian Psyche, the belief that first Europe, and now America seeks Russia’s internal dissolution and collapse remains strong. Putin is simply the most visible representation of this paranoid worldview. Hence why he believes that the act of Poland joining the NATO alliance was not a Polish initiative to ensure Polish security, but an American plot to checkmate Russia.
Throughout the interview, I developed a sense that far from being another Hitler, Vladimir Putin, despite his bloody and brutal invasion of a neighboring country, is nothing more than an old man indoctrinated in a twisted KGB worldview that has only calcified with time. In layman’s terms- Putin is the KGB assassin variant of Joe Biden. As someone who has listened to Putin’s statements for years, I already had a good idea what to expect. As as for my Bingo card, 16 of the 25 boxes were ultimately filled, including Putin’s repeated claims that the Ukrainian government is filled with neo-Nazis, that Germany is not a sovereign nation, and finally that the lack of a ceasefire is entirely Ukraine's fault.
The awkward nature of Tucker Carlson’s interview with Vladimir Putin will allow us to definitively put one theory to rest- that Tucker Carlson has secret sinister Russian ties. Following the sit-down, Putin, instead of praising Carlson, dismissed Carlson as a lightweight. Putin’s displeasure gives me the strong indication that the Russian president likely prefers confrontational discussions with Western journalists over Carlson’s out-of-character deferential treatment. In summary, the interview was, rather than a breakthrough of international diplomacy or a smoking gun of Carlson’s alleged financial ties with Russia, turned out to be a tired rehash of Putin’s classic hits delivered to a man out of his depth.
I have not seen the full interview but highlights and I would agree with most of your comments and insights especially paranoid Putin. I am curious however aboutPutin claims of a Neo-Nazi movement in Ukraine...is there any truth to these claims?