What Has the Putin Interview Achieved?

Vladimir Putin’s challenge was to tell Americans through Tucker Carlson a complicated and unfamiliar narrative of how dearly Ukrainians and Russians are paying for Putin’s initial naïve trust in the West, writes Tony Kevin.

U.S. journalist Tucker Carlson with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow on Feb. 6 for an interview that aired on Feb. 8. (Kremlin)

It is clear by now that both Vladimir Putin and Tucker Carlson took risks in embarking on their interview last week, gambles that appear to be paying off so far.

Putin was sick of rude and argumentative Western journalists. He had given no Western media interviews since Russia’s military operation in Ukraine began two years ago. He demanded, and received from Carlson, a serious  interview in which he would be free to develop his facts and arguments.

He rather sharply reminded Carlson of the agreed ground rules at the outset of the interview, saying:  “Are we having a talk show or a serious conversation?”

A chastened Carlson replied: ‘Thank you, it’s formidably serious.” And he spent the next two hours listening as Putin expounded at length on his main subjects: Russian-Ukrainian interconnected national histories since 862; and the causes, course and likely end of the present war in Ukraine.   [Available in English voice and text on the Kremlin official website.]

This style of interview left Carlson vulnerable to ridicule from leading Western mainstream media, such as The Guardian, The Economist, The New York Times, Washington Post and the BBC.

They all essentially alleged that Carlson had betrayed his profession by fluffing the opportunity to put Putin on the spot with hard “gotcha” questions. Their consensus: the interview was boring, irrelevant, rambling, full of lies, simply not worth anybody’s time watching or reading.

It is clear already that much of the world’s journalistic universe disagrees. Putin’s extended history lesson appears in the world’s media and on social media platforms to have already made an impact on serious U.S., European and Global South audiences.  Carlson’s reputation as a serious dissident Western journalist can only be enhanced by this conversation with the Russian president.

Putin’s Betrayed Trust in the West

The risk Putin ran was that under Carlson’s questioning he might inadvertently embarrass himself politically at home by exposing his earlier years of trust in the West. This trust was not finally extinguished in him until the crucial betrayal by Kiev under Western pressure of the agreement to end the Ukraine war, then still in its first weeks, which was reached in Russian-Ukrainian peace negotiations in Istanbul in March-April 2022.

Putin paid dearly for his decision then to withdraw Russian forces that had almost surrounded Kiev, as a gesture of good faith he said to the Kiev regime and its Minsk Accord guarantors, Germany and France. Within days the Bucha massacre took place, blamed on Russia but with evidence that it was carried out by the neo-Nazi Azov battalion.

Initially stunning the Kremlin with its cruelty and cynicism, Putin was then exposed to damaging criticism from harder-line Russian nationalists that he had been too gullible, putting Russian lives at risk.

Putin concluded that the West was never to be trusted again.

In the interview, Putin grieved the tragically huge number of Ukrainian and Russian Federation soldiers’ deaths and permanent disabilities in the long war, which should have ended in March 2022, but still bloodily continues.

Putin’s challenge was to tell American mainstream audiences through Carlson this complicated and unfamiliar narrative without reminding listeners how dearly Ukrainians and Russians — in his view, the same people — are paying for his initial naïve trust in the West. He focused listeners’ minds on Western treachery and duplicity rather than his own naïve acceptance of their trickery.

From this perspective, the interview was a battle of wits.

Putin exposed the history of Western false assurances during the five waves of NATO expansion after President Ronald Reagan’s and Bush Senior’s promises of “not an inch” to the East. He recounted the history of the United States’ sabotage of the Russian-German, Baltic gas pipeline last year, leading to the subsequent impoverishment of the German economy through loss of access to Russian cheap energy.

He denounced the Scholz government’s continuing betrayal of German national interests in favour of U.S. and NATO interests. He recalled how the war in Ukraine actually began with the February 2014 U.S.-instigated coup d’etat in Maidan Square, how Kiev’s military attacked Crimea and the Donbass and how Putin eventually responded by entering Russian troops into Ukraine in February 2022.

Rebutting Claims of Territorial Ambition

Putin rebutted claims of Russia’s territorial ambitions in and beyond Ukraine. He left open the possibility of future Romanian, Hungarian and Polish claims on parts of Western Ukraine annexed  by Stalin in 1945.  He made it clear  the Odessa region was at risk of being incorporated into Russia, along with the four already incorporated Novorussian regions.  But he promised flexibility in peace negotiations, saying:

“Let them [Ukraine regime, U.S. and NATO ] think how to do it with dignity. There are options if there is a will.”

It may be significant that Putin complimented Volodymyr Zelensky’s grandfather’s good war record in the Great Patriotic War. This may suggest Putin does not rule out Zelensky possibly having a role as Ukrainian leader in peace negotiations.

Putin effortlessly rebutted Carlson’s efforts to tempt him to express an opinion in favour of former President Donald Trump in the upcoming U.S. presidential election, a trap he was too smart to fall into. Putin replied that it does not matter who is U.S. president, the hegemonic policies and values of the Washington permanent elite remain the same.

Carlson’s Curveball

Towards the end of the interview, Carlson threw Putin an interesting curveball, asking him to release Evan Gershkovich, the sentenced and imprisoned U.S. journalist on espionage charges, and allow Carlson to take him back to the United States.

Putin was likely prepared for the Gershkovich issue to come up.  Carlson had to raise it, or else he would have been crucified by the Western media.

Yet I think Putin was taken aback by the drama of Carlson’s proposal. He answered carefully and in detail. I believe this exchange will prove useful in negotiating Gershkovich’s eventual release and hopefully also that of Paul Whelan, a U.S. marine imprisoned in Russia for espionage, as part of a delicate prisoner exchange. It would involve the case of a Russian agent’s execution in Germany of a notorious Chechen terrorist who had murdered Russian prisoners of war during the Chechen wars.

Western media had no plausibility in accusing Carlson (as they nevertheless tried to do) of not raising the Gershkovich case strongly enough.

On other matters, Putin bluntly accused the West of C.I.A. subversion against Russia in the Chechen wars and other jihadist violent insurgencies in the North Caucasus — more categorically and bitterly than ever before publicly.

They did not discuss the current appalling situation in Gaza where Israel continues to violate its human rights obligations as a U.N. member. I assume this was by prior agreement: probably Putin did not want to be personally quizzed on Russia’s position on Israel’s ongoing massive war crimes. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Russia’s U.N. ambassador have already made such criticisms strongly.

One could argue that the outcome was a win for both men.  Putin offered the West through the vehicle of the Carlson interview a clear window into his thinking on how to end the war in Ukraine: denazification as part of the peace negotiation and subsequent legislation, and an end to Western arms supplies to Kiev.

Putin ended the interview on his own terms. He was mocked by Sarah Rainsford of the BBC for doing so, proving yet again that years spent working in the in-bred Western foreign correspondent community in Moscow do not open closed Russophobic minds.

Tony Kevin is a former Australian senior diplomat, having served as ambassador to Cambodia and Poland, as well as being posted to Australia’s embassy in Moscow. He is the author of six published books on public policy and international relations.

CORRECTION:  Putin praised Zelenksy’s grandfather, not father, as was earlier reported.

The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.