Tucker Carlson and Vladimir Putin
Key takeaways from the important two-hour interview
On February 6, 2024, well-known U.S. political commentator Tucker Carlson conducted an interview with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow. I provide in today’s commentary a review of the interview, which lasted 127 minutes.1
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The Ukraine in Russian history
Putin began with an extended discussion of Russian history, which he declared to be the necessary foundation for a serious conversation. In Putin’s account, Russia began forming into a centralized state in the ninth century, with two centers of power, namely Kiev, the current capital of Ukraine, and Novgorod, situated between Moscow and St. Petersburg. Beginning in 988, Russia began conversion to Orthodox Christianity, which strengthened the unity of Russia into a single territory with one language and integrated economic ties. Following a period of fragmentation, common at that time in Europe, the Russian state reunified, with its center in Moscow. During this period, the southern part of Russian lands, including Kiev, began gravitating toward another magnet, becoming part of the unified state of Poland and Lithuania, even though they spoke the old Russian language and were Orthodox. The Poles introduced their language there and tried to entrench the idea that the population was not exactly Russian, because they lived on the fringe of Russian territory. In fact, the word “Ukrainian” originally meant a person living on the outskirts or engages in border patrol services; it did not refer to a particular ethnic group. The people were treated harshly, even cruelly, which gave rise to a tendency for the people in this part of Russian lands to struggle for their rights. They wrote letters to Warsaw, demanding their rights. This was in the thirteenth century.
During the seventeenth century, the people in authority in that part of Russian lands demanded that Warsaw send them rulers of Russian origin and Orthodox faith. But Warsaw rejected their demands, so they turned to Moscow. Putin presented copies of letters from Bohdan Khmelnytsky, who then controlled that part of Russian lands, asking to be placed “under the strong hand of the Moscow Tsar.”
At first, Moscow did not accept the request, assuming that it would provoke a war between Russia and Poland. But in 1654, a Russian assembly of top clergy and landowners, headed by the Tsar, which was the representative body of the old Russian state, decided to include a part of the old Russian lands into the Moscow Kingdom. As expected, this led to war with Poland, which led to a peace treaty with Poland, which recognized most of this land, including Kiev, as a part of Russia, and with the territory on the right (west) bank of the Dnieper River remaining in Poland. Under Catherine the Great, Russia reclaimed all its historical lands, which was the situation until the Russian Revolution of 1917. The civil war in Russia included hostilities with Poland, and a 1921 peace settlement returned the right bank of the Dnieper River to Poland.
Prior to the First World War, the Austrian General Staff started to put forth the idea of Ukrainization, with the intention of weakening the potential enemy. The key notion of Ukrainization was that the people living in the territory were not really Russians but belonged to a special ethnic group. However, all Ukrainians who took up this idea and called for an independent Ukraine insisted that Ukraine should have very good relations with Russia.
In 1922, when the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) was established, the Bolsheviks started building the Soviet socialist republics, and the Soviet Ukraine, which had never before existed, was established; and which included lands that had no historical connection to the Ukraine, such as the Black Sea Region. Stalin insisted that these republics be autonomous entities.
The Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, the 1939 Non-Aggression Treaty between Nazi Germany and the USSR, gave a part of the territory of western Ukraine to the Soviet Union, such that the USSR recuperated all of Russia’s historical lands. Following World War II, these territories were “enshrined as belonging to Russia.”
For decades, the Ukrainian Soviet Republic developed as part of the USSR. The Bolsheviks supported the idea of Ukrainization, in part because some of the Bolshevik leaders were from Ukraine, and in part because it was consistent with “the general policy of indigenization pursued by the Soviet Union,” promoting the national languages and national cultures, which is not a bad idea in principle. Following World War II, Ukraine received lands that had previously belonged to Poland, Hungary, and Romania, which was a reflection of Stalin’s participation in the meetings of the Big Three. Therefore, Putin declared, “we have every reason to affirm that Ukraine is an artificial state that was shaped at Stalin's will.” Putin noted that when he traveled to western Ukraine in the 1980s, the people had preserved the Hungarian language and customs, and they felt themselves to be Hungarians.
Putin observed that it was the Russian leadership, as distinct from the leadership of the Soviet Union, that effectively initiated the collapse of the Soviet Union. He suspects that they had assumed that positive relations between Russia and Ukraine would continue in the new era, because of the common language. More than 90% of the population in Ukraine spoke Russian, and every third person had some kind of family or friendship ties. There was a common history and common religious faith, and they had interconnected economies.
Putin asserted that Russia agreed to the collapse of the Soviet Union, believing that it would be understood in the West as an invitation for cooperation and association. Russia expected cooperation from the USA and the West in general. He noted that Egon Bahr, an elder and respected politician of the Social Democratic Party of Germany, was calling for the establishment of a new security system in Europe, involving the cooperation of the United States, Canada, Russia, and Central European countries. Bahr declared that if NATO expands, it would ensure the continuation of the Cold War.
Putin maintains that the United States promised that NATO would not expand eastward. But the promise was a deception. “You tricked us,” Putin declared. The promises of NATO are not enshrined on paper, Russia was told. There were, Putin observes, five subsequent waves of expansion to the east, beginning with the Baltic states and culminating in the whole of Eastern Europe. Although Russia tolerated it, she was continually calling upon NATO not to expand. “We were trying to persuade them. We were saying, please don't. We are as bourgeois now as you are. We are a market economy and there is no Communist Party power. Let's negotiate.”
In 2008, at the Summit in Bucharest, NATO declared that its doors were open to Ukraine and Georgia to join NATO. There was subsequent movement back and forth among the politicians of Germany, France, and other European countries. Putin declared that he considered the entire affair ridiculous, nonsensical, and childish. Pressures were being exerted, and it was never clear with whom one ought to talk. In the midst of this, Russia’s position was clear. Russia had never agreed to the inclusion of Ukraine in NATO, and in the elections following the independence of Ukraine, it was always assumed that Ukraine would be neutral, inasmuch as the electorate had a good attitude toward Russia in one form or another.
The question of Ukraine joining the European Union, which emerged during the presidency of Viktor Yanukovych (2010-2014), was a distinct issue. Russia initially had a lenient attitude toward Ukraine’s association with the EU. However, upon reading the treaty of association, Russia saw that Ukraine had to open its borders to Europe. For Russia, this was a problem, because Russia had an agreement of free trade and open customs with Ukraine, which would mean that the Russian market would be flooded by Ukrainian membership in EU. So Russia concluded that if Ukraine were to sign the treaty of association with the European Union, Russia would have to close its customs borders with Ukraine.
Taking the Russian position into account, Yanukovych had to calculate how much Ukraine was going to win and how much it was going to lose by entering into a free trade zone with European partners. There had been a high level of trade between Ukraine and Russia, Putin notes, characterized by mutual dependency, in which Ukrainian enterprises needed components assembled in Russia, and vice versa. So Ukraine announced that it needed more time before signing the agreement to enter the European Union, which led to destructive steps by the opposition, culminating in Maidan and a coup in Ukraine in 2014, which was backed by the CIA. The new leadership, as Putin sees it, began prosecuting those who did not accept the coup, created a threat to Crimea, and launched the war in Donbass with the use of aircraft and artillery against civilians, all occurring in the context of the invitation to join NATO. This is when the war in Ukraine began. Subsequently, they launched a large-scale military operation,2 which failed.
The current leadership in Ukraine declared that it would not implement the Minsk agreements, which had been signed following the events of 2014, and which set forth a peace settlement in Donbass. Even though Germany and France were mediators and signatories, they made no effort to ensure its implementation, and indeed, the former leaders of Germany and France have openly declared that, although they signed the Minsk agreements, they never intended to implement them. Putin maintained that it would have been negligent of Russia to not come to the defense “of Russian people in the face of this war machine.”
Putin reiterates that it was the Ukrainian government with the support of the West that started the war in 2014. The Russian military operation that was initiated in 2022 is an attempt to stop it. Putin declared:
I repeat, once again, we have repeatedly, repeatedly proposed to seek a solution to the problems that arose in Ukraine after the 2014 coup d'etat through peaceful means. But no one listens to us. And moreover, the Ukrainian leaders who were under complete US control suddenly declared that they would not comply with the Minsk agreements. They disliked everything there and continued military activity in that territory. And in parallel, that territory was being exploited by NATO military structures under the guise of various personnel training and retraining centers. They essentially began to create bases there. That's all. Ukraine announced that the Russians were a non-titular nationality, while passing the laws that limit the rights of non-titular nationalities in Ukraine. Ukraine having received all the southeastern territories as a gift from the Russian people, suddenly announced that the Russians were a non-titular nationality in that territory. Is that normal? All this put together led to the decision to end the war [by means of the Russian military operation initiated in 2022] that neo-Nazis started in Ukraine in 2014.
I have written previous commentaries on the expansion of NATO as recounted by Putin, the failure to implement the Minsk agreements, and the unfolding of the war from 2014 to 2022.
“Russia, Ukraine, and the media: Invasion or defensive military action?”, February 25, 2022
“The military situation in Ukraine: Russian self-defense and media lies,” March 25, 2022
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US-Russian relations
A key point in the deterioration of U.S.-Russian relations, Putin recounted, was Russian President Yeltsin’s support of Serbs in the context of developments in Yugoslavia. Putin observes that Russia had no choice but to support the Serbs, because of the relation between the Serbs and Russia, the common Orthodox culture, and the fact that Serbia is a nation that has suffered much for generations. But ignoring Russian views, the United States began a bombardment of Belgrade, in violation of international law and the UN Charter. When Russia protested, the response was that international law and the UN Charter had become obsolete. It was true, Putin observed, that changes had to be made, because the balance of power had changed. “But not in this manner.”3
Prior to the developments in Yugoslavia, Yeltsin had traveled to the United States, had addressed the U.S. Congress, and was lavished with praised. But as a result of his position with respect to Yugoslavia, “Yeltsin was immediately dragged through the mud, accused of alcoholism, of understanding nothing, of knowing nothing. He understood everything, I assure you.”
Putin observed that when he became President in 2000, his view was that the Yugoslav issue was over, so Russia should try to re-open the door of relations with the West that Yeltsin had tried to open. In a meeting in the Kremlin with outgoing President Bill Clinton, Putin asked Clinton what the response would be if Russia were to ask to join NATO. The U.S. President responded that the idea was interesting, and he thought it would be possible; but later in the evening Clinton informed Putin that he had consulted with his team, and the answer is “no, it is not possible now.” So Putin concluded, “Okay, fine. But let's build relations in another manner. Let's look for common ground elsewhere.”
For example, Putin reported, Russia made an effort to develop prudent relations with the United States with respect to Iraq. And Russia repeatedly raised the issue that the United States should not support separatism or terrorism in the North Caucasus. But in spite of the Russian position, the United States and its satellites provide political, information, financial, and even military support for terrorist groups in the Caucuses.
In addition, Putin had a serious conversation with George Bush Senior and his team concerning Putin’s proposal that the United States, Europe, and Russia jointly develop a defense missile system, because Putin considered the development of a unilateral missile defense system by the USA to be a threat to Russia’s security. The Bush team stated that they found the idea interesting. Putin reports that he (Putin) declared, “just imagine if we could settle such a global strategic security challenge together. The world will change. We'll probably have disputes, probably economic and even political ones. But we could drastically change the situation in the world."
Officially, the United States stated that the missile defense system was being created against missile threats from Iran. But the conversation concerning the Russian proposal for a joint missile defense system continued. During the administration of George W. Bush, Secretary of Defense Gates and Secretary of State Rice, in a meeting with Putin in the Kremlin, informed him that they had thought about the proposal, and they were in agreement, but with some exceptions.
Ultimately, Putin reported, the proposal was declined. When informed, Putin reports that he responded immediately that Russia would be forced to take countermeasures and to create strike systems that could overcome missile defense. He was informed that this Russian reaction was understood, that the U.S. missile defense system was not directed against Russia, and that Russia should consider itself free to develop such a missile system, as long as it is not against the United States. Putin reports, “that's the way it went. And we created hypersonic systems with intercontinental range, and we continue to develop them. We are now ahead of everyone, the United States and the other countries in terms of the development of hypersonic strike systems. And we are improving them every day. But it wasn't us. We proposed to go the other way and we were pushed back.”4
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The unwise U.S. weaponization of the dollar
Carlson asked if the sanctions applied by the United States affect the status of the U.S. dollar as the world’s universally accepted currency. Putin’s response:
To use the dollar as a tool of foreign policy struggle is one of the biggest strategic mistakes made by the U.S. political leadership. The dollar is the cornerstone of the United States power. . .. As soon as the political leadership decided to use the U.S. dollar as a tool of political struggle, a blow was dealt to this American power. I would not like to use any strong language, but it is a stupid thing to do and a grave mistake. Look at what is going on in the world. Even U.S. allies are now downsizing their dollar reserves. Seeing this, everyone starts looking for ways to protect themselves. But the fact that the United States applies restrictive measures to certain countries, such as placing restrictions on transactions, freezing assets, etc., causes grave concern and sends a signal to the whole world. What did we have here [in Russia]? Until 2022, . . . U.S. dollars accounted for approximately 50% of our transactions with third countries. Well, currently it is down to 13%. It wasn't us who banned the use of the U.S. dollar. We had no such intention. It was the decision of the United States to restrict our transactions in U.S. dollars. I think it is complete foolishness from the point of view of the interests of the United States itself and its taxpayers, as it damages the U.S. economy, undermines the power of the United States across the world. By the way, our transactions in yuan accounted for about 3%. Today, 34% of our transactions are made in rubles and about as much, a little over 34%, in yuan. Why did the United States do this? My only guess is self-conceit. They probably thought it would lead to full collapse, but nothing collapsed. Moreover, other countries, including oil producers, are thinking of and already accepting payments for oil in yuan. Do you even realize what is going on or not? Does anyone in the United States realize this? What are you doing? You are cutting yourself off. All experts say this. Ask any intelligent and thinking person in the United States what the dollar means for the USA. But you are killing it with your own hands.
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The emergence of an alternative world order as an objective tendency
Carlson expressed agreement with Putin’s assessment of the negative consequences of the U.S. use of the dollar as an instrument of foreign policy. However, he suggested the possible danger that Russia and the countries of BRICS may become completely dominated by China and the Chinese economy. Putin responded with the expression of an alternative understanding of the changing international order.
We're neighbors with China. . .. We have a centuries long history of coexistence. . .. China's foreign policy philosophy is not aggressive. Its idea is to always look for compromise. And we can see that. . .. China's cooperation with Europe is growing [and] is higher and greater than that of the growth of Chinese Russian cooperation. If you ask Europeans, aren't they afraid? They might be. I don't know. But they are still trying to access China's market at all costs, especially now that they are facing economic problems. Chinese businesses are also exploring the European market. Do Chinese businesses have small presence in the United States? Yes. The political decisions are such that they are trying to limit the cooperation with China. It is to your own detriment, Mr. Tucker, that you are limiting cooperation with China. You are hurting yourself. It is a delicate matter and there are no silver bullet solutions, just as it is with the dollar. So before introducing any illegitimate sanctions, illegitimate in terms of the Charter of the United Nations, decision makers should think very carefully. This appears to be a problem. . ..
Together with my colleague and friend President XI Jinping, we set the goal to reach $200 billion of mutual trade with China this year. We have exceeded this level. According to our figures, our bilateral trade with China totals already $230 billion. And the Chinese statistics say it is $240 billion. One more important thing. Our trade is well balanced, mutually complementary in high tech, energy, and scientific research and development. It is very balanced. As for BRICS, when Russia took over the presidency this year, the BRICS countries are by and large developing very rapidly. Look, if memory serves me right, back in 1992, the share of the G7 countries in the world economy amounted to 47%, whereas in 2022 it was down to, I think, a little over 30%. The BRICS countries accounted for only 16% in 1992, but now their share is greater than that of the G7. It has nothing to do with the events in Ukraine. This is due to the trends of global development and world economy, as I mentioned just now. And this is inevitable. This will keep happening. It is like the rays of the sun. You cannot prevent the sun from rising. You have to adapt to it. How does the United States adapt with the force of sanctions, pressure, bombings, and use of armed forces? This is about self-conceit. Your political establishment does not understand that the world is changing under objective circumstances. And in order to preserve your level . . ., you have to make the right decisions in a competent and timely manner. Such brutal actions, with respect to Russia and other countries, are counterproductive. This is an obvious fact. It has already become evident. . .. It is not about the leader. It is not about the personality of a particular person [such as Bush or Trump]. It is not about the personality of the leader. It is about the elite’s mindset. . .. If the idea of domination at any cost, based also on forceful actions, dominates the American society, nothing will change. It will only get worse. But if in the end, one comes to the awareness that the world has been changing due to objective circumstances, and that one should be able to adapt to them in time, using the advantages that the USA still has today, then perhaps something may change.
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Conclusion
In a preamble to the interview, Mr. Carlson stated that he believed that Putin was being sincere. Indeed so. In the inequalities of the world order, there are countries that are lied to and lied about. In this situation, there emerge exceptional leaders, dedicated to seeking to discern beyond the lies and to explaining the truth to the people of the nation and the world. Vladimir Putin is one such exceptional leader. He is committed to truth, justice, and the Russian way.
Not that there is a Russian truth and an American truth, or a Russian truth and a Western truth. No. There is only one truth for all of humanity. You arrive at understanding of truth by commitment on all sides, with each honestly speaking from their vantage point, in a sustained conversation characterized by mutual listening.
Tucker Carlson is to be commended for initiating a momentary interruption to the structured deafness of the USA and the West. I call upon him to continue on that road, with respect to all the issues that confront humanity, and with special attention to voices found in the neo-colonized regions of the world.
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I worked with a written transcript, available through the Website of Tucker Carlson Network.
Mr. Putin refers to Ukraine’s military operations against the self-proclaimed people’s republics in Donbass, the eastern most region of Ukraine, overwhelmingly Russian in language and culture.
The 120 member states of the Non-Aligned Movement as well as China repeatedly reaffirm today the principles of the UN Charter as the necessary foundation for world peace and prosperity. They also call for democratic reforms in the structures of the United Nations, calling for an expanded membership of the Security Council and a greater balance of power between the Security Council and the General Assembly.
I presume that the problem with the Russian proposal is that such international cooperation in response to common security threats would have to be designed as a response to genuine threats against national security, and not as pretext. With a joint arrangement with other nations, the USA would have much less freedom of action to use national security as a pretext, manipulating the evidence and the information with respect to an alleged national security threat, in order to attain a particular political/economic agenda. Putin reported that the U.S. team asked if he were serious, perhaps appreciating that it was a proposal that implied a change in the rules of the game, something for which the United States, however, is not at present prepared, neither ideologically, politically, nor economically.