[imagesource:wikimediacommons]

I hope you have your propaganda and posturing lenses on because this is a wild interview that is going to require some serious discernment.

President Putin of Russia just gave his first interview with a Western journalist since the start of the war in Ukraine – none other than the disgraced ex-Fox News anchor and conspiracy theorist Tucker Carlson. The two-hour, hotly anticipated interview with the Russian president was published on the far-right commentator’s website on Thursday.

Some of the “nuggets of Putin-think” that emerged from the interview include Putin suggesting that if the West ceased aiding Kyiv’s defence, his nation’s complete invasion of Ukraine might finally conclude, per Politico.

“If you really want to stop fighting, you need to stop supplying weapons,” referring to Western aid to Kyiv. “It will be over within a few weeks. That’s it,” he added.

Putin also mentioned that he can’t remember the last time he spoke with his US counterpart Joe Biden and that he had a “personal relationship” with his predecessor Donald Trump

He also seemed to blame the conflict on the US and Britain, saying it had been triggered by Nato expansion and prolonged by Boris Johnson.

Putin then asserted that the detained American journalist Evan Gershkovich was apprehended while in possession of confidential information in Russia, yet he mentioned the possibility of reaching an agreement with the US for his release. The 32-year-old Wall Street Journal correspondent has been in pre-trial detention for almost a year on espionage charges.

Putin then, without mentioning him by name, referred to the case of Vadim Krasikov, a Russian FSB agent currently serving a life sentence in Germany for murder, whom Moscow reportedly is aiming to swap for Gershkovich.

Carlson uploaded the interview as an episode on X:

Ep. 73 The Vladimir Putin Interview pic.twitter.com/67YuZRkfLL

— Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) February 8, 2024

Putin chatting to Carlson makes sense since the far-right reporter has repeatedly questioned US aid to Ukraine and mirrored the Kremlin’s propaganda on numerous occasions.

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov earlier this week did not hide that Carlson had been handpicked because of his Moscow-friendly position on the conflict.

American journalist and historian Anne Applebaum has even accused Carlson of being “a propagandist, with a history of helping autocrats conceal corruption”.

This interview feels uncannily like watching a sly fox and an angry bear bond over what they have in common.

[source:politico]