Vladimir Putin and Tucker Carlson during an interview. Photo: kremlin.ru
A conversation lasting just over two hours in the Kremlin between Russian President Vladimir Putin and former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, which Russian viewers were able to see after 7 a.m. on February 9 in a recording, in a broadcast live that began at 6 p.m. Thursday, Washington time, and two in the morning, Moscow time, on the social network owned by Elon Musk became one of the main events in the world.
On Radio Komsomolskaya Pravda, political scientist and candidate of historical sciences Georgy Bovt shared with us his impressions of the conversation between Putin and Carlson.
– What did you find most interesting about the communication between the Russian leader and the star American journalist?
– I looked at the original source. And I can’t answer the question about “the best.” I get the impression that Carlson in the Kremlin looked like a man who couldn’t prepare well enough for the texture falling on his head. Many things, and not only the deeply historical ones, were unknown to him. The interlocutor knew how to impose his line of conversation on the interviewer.
– Have you really not heard anything new?
– Neither for me, an educated person, nor for the broad Russian public, almost everything that was said, from history to modern times, to the events of recent years, was new. But the American public had probably never seen or heard anything like it before.
– “Almost all” – but not all?
– Maybe something new for me personally was heard at the end of the conversation. There was talk of the American journalist Gershkovich, detained in Russia for espionage.
– We were informed that you were spying in the Urals, at a defense company in Nizhny Tagil.
– Yes, this is what the security forces reported. Putin, in response to Carlson’s question, made a reservation that confidential dialogue between the special services on this matter continues. And the president proposed an exchange formula. He told me about the man Krasikov, who killed the Chechen field commander Khangoshvili in Berlin. Putin said that he was committed by a Russian patriot and Khangoshvili is known for his atrocities against Russian soldiers. That is, it sounded like this: you give you Krasikov, who is imprisoned for life in Germany, and we give you Gershkovich. This is new.
Wall Street Journal correspondent, American citizen Evan Gershkovich, accused of espionage, at a Moscow City Court meeting. Photo: EPA/TASS
– To what extent will the West remember or understand the history lesson taught by the president?
– Whether or not the Americans understood this history lesson, we will find out later. Did we expect Carlson to ask all the necessary questions? It’s probably true. If we talk from the point of view of official authorities, then the task that was set in Russia with the preparation of this conversation has probably already been completed. It is difficult to say what tasks Carlson set for himself and whether he fulfilled them.
-What would you ask him if you were Carlson?
– Carlson tried to ask difficult questions. He attempted to interrupt the initial historical excursion by asking him whether Moscow was willing to fix the current borders during the Northern Military District. Putin recalled that Ukraine has always been part of Russia, for centuries.
– Carlson tried to clarify the issue of denazification.
– Yes, he asked how Ukraine could be denazified without possessing the entire territory. But Carlson seemed to know nothing about denazification in Germany, which in 1945 was generally divided into four zones. If anyone expected the American star to “fool” the Russian leader, no, it didn’t happen like that. Is it possible that Carlson was trying to goad Putin with a question about Gershkovich, saying: what kind of spy is he? But there were historical messages about who, what and where they really belonged.
– And the inviolability of post-war borders?
– In Europe, for example, they are taboo. After all, the “pre-war” part of Germany, let’s say, belongs to Poland. And part of Poland goes to Ukraine. But for the United States these taboos do not matter.
– Have all important questions been answered?
– Putin went over all the benchmarks that are sensitive to the American Republican audience. He explained why the United States is wasting money on Ukraine instead of dealing with its own problems, and that the United States has no really serious interests in Ukraine except confrontation with Russia.
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