Putin on Tucker on X

Tucker Carlson recently interviewed Vladimir Putin, the President of Russia, and it was very interesting.

Putin Interview on X

As you all no doubt know, once Tucker Carlson was fired from Fox for as yet unknown reasons (though speculation is rife that his anti-big-pharma stand was the issue), he started up his own independent media network on the web and streaming on the X (formerly Twitter) platform.

You can sign up for the full experience at https://tuckercarlson.com/ for $6/month, and he also posts some of the full content and some teasers to X for no cost. This interview he streamed in full on X for free (the link is above).

Tucker's rationale is simple. He believes in journalism. He believes in letting the viewers hear all sides of a discussion. He does not endorse Putin's views, but he feels we have a right to hear Putin express them.

He first wanted to interview Putin while at Fox, but while he was setting that up, he got word that the US NSA was spying on him and had read all of his communications. His high-level US government source read him his own encrypted Telegraph messages back to him. That became the bigger story at the time, conveniently ignored by the rest of the mainstream media.

Since leaving Fox, he reports he feels an incredible sense of freedom and opportunity, and his audience has broadened considerably.

He regularly garners in the 10s of millions of views. His debate night interview with President Trump has garnered 267M views, and in only a few days his Putin interview has approached the 200M mark. There is a vast hunger for long form, intelligent, objective journalism, and Tucker is now the leader in independent media to fill that void. This Putin interview was a case in point.

The interview clocks in at just over 2 hours and Tucker mainly just allows Putin to speak.

The interview starts with Tucker referencing Putin's speech at the time of his invasion and saying he gave his reasons for attacking Ukraine as fearing the Americans would launch a surprise attack from there and pre-empting that.

That is not exactly accurate, as Putin points out. Putin then asks Tucker if this is going to be a talk show or a serious interview? Tucker says serious. Putin says in that case he will give him a fulsome answer and starts in with the history of Russia and Ukraine.

Putin goes back to the 9th century and gives a 30 minute historically correct retelling of the history of Russia and the Ukrainian lands. He makes the case large parts of the region now known as Ukraine was historically Russia. This is indisputibly true. Tucker presses him by asking if that gives him the right to invade, and if so, why did he wait until now, and if he ever counselled other leaders, such as Viktor Orban of Hungary to take back their historical lands from Ukraine. Putin is clearly annoyed at Tucker's line of questioning and paries it by returning to his answer and telling Tucker to be patient.

FYI, if you'd like a well done not hysterical counterpoint that fact checks and better contextualizes Putin in all this, I would recommend the Trigernometry Podcast with Konstantin Kisin and Francis Foster.

https://www.youtube.com/live/_wyvERQjvkE?si=bYufJEKu7aW28mMJ

Kisin is a Russian American who opposes Putin but is honest and not prone to swallowing western propaganda any more than Russian propaganda. Kisin basically agrees with the history Putin gives.

Putin's main point is that Ukraine wasn't even a country until the USSR assembled it in the wake of WW1 (as were many European countries). Putin emphasizes how Stalin and Lenin and later Khrushchev and Brezhnev set up Ukraine and handed over Russian lands to it to make it a more complete self-sustaining whole. Recall, Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus were the three founding members of the USSR. I have some background on all of this with maps and such on an earlier blog post: Russian Invasion of Ukraine.

Putin was very critical of these former Soviet leaders for giving away Russian lands so freely and for then insanely (in his opinion) allowing the members of the USSR to secede by a vote and carry off all that land.

After the dissolution of the USSR where that became a reality, leadership was not so fussed because of the incredibly strong ties between the former Soviet Republics. A common language, a common history, a common education, deep family ties across the countries, a common religion (Easter Orthodox Christianity), very strong and voluminous trade, and a completely intertwined economy (e.g. with plants is one country making parts and assembling components for plants in the other country, back and forth).

Putin reiterates the promise made at the time of dissolution that NATO would not move East at all. The fact that the promise was made is not disputed, though it was never put in writing, likely because it was a lie from NATO.

Putin goes on to say the west pushed NATO east in multiple drives, each one of which was bitterly opposed by Russia.

At one point, Putin tells a story of how when he was meeting then President Bill Clinton in the Kremlin that he asked if Russia could join NATO. Bill said that would be great, but later that day pulled it back after consultations with his people saying it would not be possible at this time.

Putin said that Russia proposed to join the West in developing a ballistic missile defence system, but was rebuffed. As a result they were forced to develop their hypersonic missile tech, which is now the most advanced in the world.

Putin kept asking why the West always rebuffed and provoked Russia even after they had dissolved the USSR and turned capitalist? Putin suggests it's a hangover from the Cold War and too many American spies (and industries) that only knew one way to survive, by hating on Russia.

Putin was aggrieved when the American CIA supported anti-Russian terrorists in the Caucasus.

Putin was aggrieved in 2008 when Ukraine held a third round of elections, unconstitutionally, to try to get in an anti-Russian President.

Putin was then further aggrieved when the US staged a coup in Ukraine and installed their chosen candidate by force. The so-called Maidan uprising.

The US then began openly making overtures for Ukraine to join NATO and started setting up training bases in the Ukraine. The Ukraine then started discriminating against the Russian speakers in the East who were opposed to the CIA-led coup. This led to the hostilities in the Donbas with Ukraine bombing them and the Donbas suing for independence. Russia also peacefully took back The Crimea where their key warm water naval base was located. There was a referendum and it was almost unanimous that they wanted to be a part of Russia.

Putin explained a big goal of his was to pressure Ukraine to de-Nazify as the Neo-Nazis were very antagonistic to Russians in Ukraine and were responsible for the hostilities and the atrocities in the Donbas. It is a fact that Banderas, a genuine Nazi, is hailed as a hero to this day in Ukraine. There was an entire regiment of Neo-Nazis, the Azov brigade, that were brought as a whole into the army. Putin brought up the incident in the Canadian parliament where an ex Nazi SS soldier was given a standing ovation, including by Zelensky. Putin expressed utter disbelief at this episode (as do I!).

He notes that Zelensky is ethnically Jewish, but suggests that once in power it was hard to go against the Neo-Nazis, as they held a lot of power. Zelensky campaigned on bringing peace to the Ukraine and fully reneged in that promise because of such pressure.

Putin's point is that he did not start this war. Forces in Ukraine supported by the U.S. started it in 2014 with the coup and the bombing of Donbas, and he now had a duty to finish it. He likens it more to a civil war within Russia than to two different countries warring.

He talked about his repeated attempts to make peace.

The Minsk accords re. the Donbas that the West (and especially the Neo Nazi Azov brigade) scuttled. Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, has since been quoted as saying they only signed off to buy time to better arm Ukraine.

There was a peace deal arranged a few months after the Russian invasion which was largely complete. Upon request from Ukraine who said they could not negotiate with a gun to their head, as a gesture of goodwill Russian forces pulled back from Kiev in anticipation of the signing of this peace accord. However Ukraine reneged when Boris Johnson came under Biden's orders to scuttle that.

Tucker asks Putin why he thought the West did that. Putin said they were under a delusion that Russian military would collapse.

Tucker asked who blew up the Nordstream pipeline. Putin said basically "follow the money".

Tucker said a common criticism is that if he succeeds in Ukraine he will attack the rest of Europe next. Putin laughed that off as being ridiculous. He says he has enough problems at home and doesn't need more.

Putin made the point that the sanctions against Russia were not working. They were the strongest growing economy in Europe. He said the US weaponizing their currency is a stupid and ultimately losing strategy for the US. He said the decline of America is inevitable, like the British empire before it, and they had a choice to let it happen gradually and painlessly, or continue flailing by using military aggression and weaponizing trade and currency and make the collapse happen faster and more painfully.

That's President Putin's POV and where he's coming from. If we ever want peace, we better start listening.

Bravo to Tucker for doing what the other journalists won't.

Please note, the above views are Putin's. There is another side that you can get from the Kisin podcast, though having heard both, I personally find Putin's take to be closer to reality.

Please keep it civil and courteous in the comments. I will have a low tolerance for rudeness and personal attacks. If I get even a hint of it, rather than reasoned discourse, I will not publish despite the merits of the rest. You have been warned!