Tucker Carlson streams interview with Vladimir Putin: LIVE UPDATES

Zelensky was elected president on a platform of peace, but allied himself with “neo-Nazis and nationalists” after taking office, Putin says. He sees two reasons for this.

The first is that people like this are “aggressive and… you can expect anything from them,” and the second is that “the US-led West supports them and will always support those who antagonize Russia.” It was “beneficial and safe” for Zelensky, but obviously betrayed the promises he made to voters.

It was “ridiculous and very sad” that Kiev listened to then-British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and refused to sign a draft truce with Russia that was agreed on during peace talks in 2022, Putin believes. The war continues on, while Johnson himself is no longer in office, he noted.

Asked why Johnson would interfere in the first place, Putin says: “I don’t understand it myself.”

“Everyone [in the West] had the illusion that Russia could be defeated on the battlefield. Because of arrogance, because of a pure heart, but not because of a great mind.”

Russia would only engage in a military conflict with a NATO nation such as Poland or Latvia if it is attacked, Putin says. Any Western claims to the contrary are “just threat mongering.”

Speculation that Russia would use nuclear weapons against Ukraine or cause some kind of escalation of the conflict are “just horror stories for people in the street in order to extort additional money from US taxpayers and European taxpayers in the confrontation with Russia,” he claims.

Here are some more key points from the interview:

Unlike the US, Russia is not afraid of the rise of China, Putin says, calling Carlson’s suggestion that BRICS risks being “completely dominated by the Chinese economy” a “boogeyman story.”

“We are neighbors with China. You cannot choose neighbors, just as you cannot choose close relatives,” according to Putin, who added that Russia has learned to coexist with China. He went on to say that Beijing’s foreign policy is aimed at finding compromises, not aggression.

Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev wrote on Telegram that Carlson “didn’t chicken out and didn’t falter.”

He added that Putin “meticulously and comprehensively explained to the Western world why Ukraine has never existed, doesn’t exist and will not exist.” 

Medvedev currently serves as the deputy head of Russia’s Security Council and oversees military production.

The Washington Post’s Russia correspondent, Francesca Ebel, wrote that one of the reasons the Russian president had agreed to talk to Carlson was “to appeal to the more MAGA reaches of the Republican Party during an election year.”

The interview could “boost Donald Trump’s chances of reelection and convince Republicans to continue to block U.S. military aid to Ukraine,” Ebel argued.

According to the Russian media, Putin gave Carlson the copies of letters of Bogdan Khmelnitsky to the Russian tsar. Khmelnitsky was a 17th-century Cossack chief who led a rebellion against Poland and later asked Moscow for protection.

Putin mentioned Khmelnitsky’s letters when talking about the centuries of shared history between Russia and Ukraine.

US conservative talk show host and filmmaker Matt Walsh compared Putin’s answers to Biden’s latest press conference. 

“Tonight as Putin gave intelligent, scholarly answers that delved into a thousand years of Russian history, President Biden was babbling incoherently about how the president of Egypt is actually the president of Mexico,” Walsh wrote on X.

Biden confused the leaders of Mexico and Egypt when speaking to reporters at the White House on Thursday.

According to Carlson, Putin gave him a thick folder full of “documents.”

“I got my nighttime reading,” the journalist said, without describing the contents of the folder. 

The interview has garnered 35 million views on Carlson’s X account and 363,800 views on YouTube. It was also broadcast on the journalist’s personal website.