‘Hasn’t The US got anything better to do?’

On the 6^th of February Tucker Carlson recorded a two-hour interview with President Putin in The Kremlin, which was subsequently made available for streaming on the 8^th. (1)

https://tuckercarlson.com/the-vladimir-putin-interview/

For many in the alternative, independent, internet-based media this was seen as an important event, allowing as it did insight into the views and motivations of the leadership of Russia regarding the current geopolitical circumstances in general and the conflict in Ukraine in particular. Many saw this as an opportunity for people in the West to access views across the divide, views that are routinely ignored by western mainstream media, views that might contribute to a more rounded understanding of the growing stand-off between the Collective West and just about the whole of the rest of the world.

Although I too thought this an important event, I felt under no illusion about its likely impact on the various populations that make up the Collective West, for as Putin points out in the interview, our ruling elites maintain strict narrative control through their mainstream media. A two-hour interview between a controversial high-profile right-wing journalist and a demonized head of state is unlikely to be directly accessed by a majority of people – so public perceptions in the West will once again rely on how the matter is covered by the afore mentioned mainstream media. Not a promising place to start.

I do not have the time or resources to undertake a proper analysis of the West’s mainstream media’s coverage and have therefore restricted my ‘research’ to four articles published in the Guardian in the days immediately following the airing of the interview (2). I chose the Guardian because, despite its poor coverage of geopolitical matters, I still read it (selectively) and suspect that many onthebrynkers do too. So, without access to any other sources (including the main one), this is where we are likely to get our information and have our views shaped on the matter.

Now The Guardian considers itself a ‘serious’ newspaper, with a fine tradition of investigative journalism and the provider of analyses that befits its educated, left of centre, largely middle-class professional readership. I think what we might expect to be presented with is a summary of the key issues explored in the interview, how they relate to the views of the leadership of the Collective West and some analysis of how this might inform future actions.

So, what insights did The Guardian provide?

Well, the most important insight for the readership is, apparently, that the interview should never have taken place at all! It was ‘sycophantic’, marked a ‘low level of infamy for Carlson’ and provided a ‘priceless propaganda gift to Putin.’ It was ‘damaging to global democracy’ and provided ammunition for US Republicans to deny continuing aid to Ukraine.

Hmmm! I suppose the interview was never going to shore up the Western narrative of coming to the aid of plucky Ukraine – but are we really being told that we shouldn’t entertain any understanding of how the Russian leadership views the situation?. Those views must be either so evidently wrong ….. or ….. pose a credible threat to the Western narrative. That’s how propaganda works.

Most outrageous, we are told, is that Putin paints Russia as the innocent party in the Ukrainian war and doesn’t acknowledge the so obvious overall plan – ‘to reinstate the Russian Empire.’ No attempt is made to outline Putin’s rationale and arguments that underpin his positions.

Carlson predictably comes in for a significant amount of criticism – for being a ‘stooge’, ‘a useful idiot’ and someone very keen to boost the ratings (and thus income) of his relatively new independent channel. Putin is dismissed as a ‘bar room bore’ who provided a ‘rambling account’ of the history of Russia and Ukraine and the build up to the invasion (sic) in 2022.

The lion’s share of these articles trade in this sort of stuff – basically telling us that this is only a significant interview in that it serves a propaganda purpose for Russia, has the potential to undermine the West’s resolve to support Ukraine and is, in any event, full of baloney. The Guardian is not encouraging us to take the matter seriously and certainly not trying to inform us about the Russian perspective. By the time the obligatory paragraphs are inserted to provide helpful context for the reader, reminding us that Russia’s invasion (sic) in 2022 was unprovoked (sic) and has resulted in a stalemate (sic), there is precious little space left to consider the issues covered in the interview itself. What follows is a short list of Putin’s position as provided by these articles:

– If the US wants the war to stop in Ukraine it should stop providing weapons.

– The US and other western countries are prolonging the war in Ukraine.

– Russia and Ukraine are entwinned and belong together.

– The Special Military Operation was necessary to sort out corruption and conduct de Nazification in Ukraine.

– Russia will not invade Latvia or Poland.

This doesn’t seem to me to be much to take from a two-hour interview and, absent any of the details of the conversation in the interview, can all be dismissed as ‘why would we believe that?’ and ‘he would say that wouldn’t he!’ It is important to remind ourselves that we are hardly coming to these accounts of the interview with an open, neutral mind. We have been inundated with a narrative which says, ‘Putin bad,’ ‘Russia is the aggressor,’ ‘Europe is at risk of being over-run’ etc. Within a week the impact of the interview was decisively buried by the instant response of western leaders and western mainstream media to the sudden death of Alexi Navalny (3). Without any evidence being considered or offered, the message was clear – it doesn’t matter what this man says – he’s a murdering bastard!

I have seen the whole 2hr interview – admittedly only once and made notes after the event rather than as it went along (4), but I feel I can give a little more content than that provided by The Guardian. So, here we go!

Having lambasted The Guardian for prioritizing form and context over content, that is exactly where I am going to start (!) The Tucker Carlson interview style on show will have been curious to western eyes. He did not constantly interrupt or openly deride comments made by Putin. But he did ask a small number of key questions – to which he got straight forward answers. The net result was that Putin was able to speak at length about the issues, to provide context and develop cogent and coherent arguments and rationales for the points he wished to make.

Putin, for his part, conducted the interview in a relaxed and thoughtful manner. He might have taken his time to answer the questions – but answer them he did. He employed humour on a number of occasions, most notably in the opening exchanges when he sought reassurance that this was ‘a serious interview – not a talk show.’ He came across at various points as perplexed, disappointed, hurt even, contemptuous and resigned. Above all he was very clear about the position Russia was in, its relationship to the rest of the world and the actions it was taking and would need to take. Whether you agreed / disagreed with him, I think that it would be difficult not to see his as an impressive performance. He is clearly well across the issues and, crucially for me, at no point resorted to running down or mocking the actions or pronouncements of individual leaders of the Collective West. Well, that’s not entirely true – he was scathingly contemptuous of Boris Johnson – but I think we can all agree that is a slip we could all make!

The first 25 minutes was, at Putin’s insistence, given over to a history lesson about the development of the Russian state from the early middle-ages and its relationship to and with what is now Ukraine (5). I have to admit I began to find this a bit longwinded and advised some friends to skip this bit. My interest was maintained by (rightly) hoping for better things later in the interview – and by the extraordinary expression on Carlson’s face as he sought to assimilate and work out how to control what he was listening to. Carlson did at the end of this section manage to summarise Putin’s point – that Russia and Ukraine were historically linked (particularly Eastern Ukraine), that Ukraine as a separate entity was a very recent state of affairs and that other Eastern European countries had at times included parts of central and western Ukraine within their boundaries. Putin stated that Russia has historically based responsibilities to the people of Eastern Ukraine, with whom they share language, faith and much culture.

On reflection I think this highlights significant cultural differences. The West, with its focus on short sound bites and a refusal to allow history to inform the present, will struggle with a culture that thinks it’s important to set the current situation in a historical context and that values the building of coherent positions through careful analysis.

Carlson stated that his understanding of the motivation for the invasion (sic) of Ukraine was that Russia felt threatened by NATO. He asked Putin to substantiate the nature of this threat – to which Putin ran through his perspective on the history of post-Soviet relations between the West and Russia. He was clear that Russia had sought economic and security inclusion in Europe and the West and this had been rebuffed, ignored and responded to in what has subsequently turned out to be bad faith. Putin states that the West has strung Russia along with the prospect of mutual cooperation only to break all its promises. He pointed to the following examples (among many):

– Putin (and Yeltsin before him) made overtures about Russia joining NATO, which were initially received with cautious optimism by the US, only to be subsequently told that would be impossible.

– As cold war intercontinental ballistic missile treaties came to the end of their terms Putin suggested that Russia and NATO jointly develop a missile defence system that would guarantee the security of all. Once again an initially positive response from the US was subsequently reneged upon. Putin explained that this left Russia no alternative but to develop its own missile defence system.

– The infamous guarantee that NATO would not expand ‘one inch to the East’. A promise that was honoured in the breach of five waves of expansion, culminating in Ukraine being offered a path to NATO membership in 2008. Putin made clear that having a potentially hostile country with nuclear weapons on its border was completely unacceptable to Russia and would not be tolerated.

Carlson pushed Putin on the immediate triggers that led to the war in 2022. In response Putin was very clear – the war started in 2014 (not 2022) following the CIA sponsored Maidan coup, with tensions in the Donbas spilling over into a civil war in which Ukrainian forces attacked residential areas in major population centres (6). He pointed out that European countries that had provided security guarantees that should have prevented this, did nothing. Moreover, attempts at finding a peaceful solution through The Minsk Agreements, which Russia had cooperated with in good faith, were not implemented by Ukraine. Putin reminded us that a number of European leaders involved at the time have subsequently admitted that there was never any intention to implement them – that their sole purpose was to buy time in order to rebuild Ukrainian forces destroyed in the civil war.

Putin asked how could Russia not be concerned about what was happening to the people in Eastern Ukraine? – ‘How could we not support our brothers?’

The Special Military Operation in 2022 was, therefore, not the start of the conflict but was an attempt to bring the existing war to a close. A war in which all efforts to bring to a peaceful conclusion had been systematically undermined by the West. Putin points out that this negative approach on the part of the West continued with the undermining of the very positive negotiations between Ukraine and Russia that culminated in Istanbul only five weeks after the start of the Special Military Operation. Moreover, Putin states that in order to help ‘sell’ the prospective deal to the Ukrainian public, the UK, Germany and France requested that Russia showed goodwill by withdrawing its forces around Kiev. Putin says that as soon as Russia complied with this request the mood of the negotiations changed, the Ukrainian delegation withdrew and Ukraine proclaimed a huge military victory.

Putin made it clear that Russia is through with offering goodwill to Ukraine and the West and has turned its attentions and aspirations elsewhere – to the East and the South.

Carlson asked Putin why he thought the west was behaving in the way he had described – what could its motivation be? Once more Putin provided a straightforward response – that the US had chosen not to try and adapt to the inevitability of changing global economic circumstances, but rather to resist its gradual loss of hegemony through force. An important component of this strategy was to undermine, weaken and break up Russia in a prelude to confrontation with China.

Carlson then explored how the conflict in Ukraine could be brought to a peaceful conclusion. ‘Why don’t you talk to President Biden?’ Clearly feeling that he had already made the point that he couldn’t trust any of the current western leaders, Putin simply replied ‘what is there to talk about? The war will end when the US stops funding and arming Ukraine’. He went on to say that the US doesn’t know how to resolve the situation it has created and then, with a hint of exasperation, ‘Hasn’t the US got anything better to do than fund a proxy war in a country thousands of miles from its borders – like addressing internal issues or its budget deficit?’

So far, few surprises, at least for me, but in considering the particular difficulties of negotiating with the Ukrainian leadership, Putin talked vehemently about the problem of Nazism in the country, brushing aside Carlson’s counter that Hitler had died nearly seventy years ago with ‘He may have died but the ideas live on.’  He used Zelensky as a case in point, ‘He came to power on a peace ticket’ but quickly realized that a) it was better not to cross the Nazis and b) the US was funding the Nazis’ (7). Putin seems astonished that the threat of Nazism in Europe is not being taken seriously and contemptuous of western leaders who uncritically support a Ukrainian government and military that is infused with a far right Banderism. He made it clear that Russia could not tolerate this on its borders and the Collective West shouldn’t either.

In beginning to draw the interview to an end, Carlson asked whether Russian troops would ever be deployed to Poland and Latvia. Again Putin’s answer was clear, ‘Why would we? We are not interested. Russian troops would only be deployed to Poland if it attacked Russia.’

Despite his clear resignation to the fact that the West will not negotiate with Russia and that the war in Ukraine will probably have to be fought to a conclusion, Putin made it clear on a number of occasions that Russia remains open to a negotiated settlement. Such a settlement would have to include a serious consideration of an overarching security agreement for the whole of Europe. This was his final request to the West before the Russian Special Military Operation was launched in 2022. As with previous requests it was ignored.

But no matter, he would say that wouldn’t he? ………… wouldn’t he?? …….

Should we be careful of being so casually dismissive of the views of the leader of a Russia which is acknowledged everywhere (apart from in the western mainstream media) as in the process of winning a decisive victory in Ukraine. This is a war after all that has devastated Ukraine’s economy and much of its infrastructure, precipitated the displacement / migration of millions and has resulted, to date, in the death and serious injury of hundreds of thousands of combatants.

—X —

(1) I did wonder, 2 weeks later, whether this piece had missed the boat – but even with this lapse of time it seems that little mainstream coverage has been given to the content of the interview.

(2) The four Guardian articles are:

– Margaret Sullivan – ‘Tucker Carlson’s Putin interview wasn’t journalism. It was sycophancy.’

– Adam Gabbatt – ‘Talk show or serious conversation? Tucker Carlson’s interview offered neither.’

– Lisa O’Carroll – ‘Tucker Carlson interview with Putin to test EU law regulating tech companies.’

– Adam Gabbatt – ‘Putin tells Tucker Carlson the US needs to stop supplying weapons to Ukraine.’

For an excellent overview of the immediate response of western mainstream media see steelcityscribblings:

Media responses to the Putin interview

(3) At the time of writing I have no idea how Navalny died – and I suspect that is true of the vast majority of the world’s population, including the apparently ‘oh so certain’ western leaders. What does seem clear is that Putin is not a beneficiary in this situation – neither in relations with the West, nor internally where Navalny was a peripheral political figure.

(4) Which may make some of my quotes a bit loose – but I jotted the best ones down and hope I got the gist accurately enough.

(5) Putin’s grasp of history is extensive, coherent and, I suspect, is representative of the views of the  majority of Russian citizens. There are inevitably alternative perspectives e.g. Geoffrey Roberts (who gives a more nuanced overview and warns generally against history being misinterpreted to justify current actions) and Serhii Plokhy (who gives a Ukrainian nationalist account).

(6) From 2014 until a couple of days ago when the defences in Avdeyevka collapsed, Ukrainian forces regularly shelled residential districts in Donetsk City. Independent, on the ground, journalist Patrick Lancaster reports that a favoured tactic is for the Ukrainians to shell a crowded market, wait 30 minutes and then shell it again – in order to target rescue workers

(7) Putin’s concern about Nazism in Ukraine and Europe is echoed by Scott Ritter’s outburst (former US Marine and UN weapons inspector in Iraq); ‘Why in God’s name are we on the side of the Nazis and not on the side of people killing Nazis?’ (Judging Freedom 29.08.23).