Tucker Carlson Interviews President Vladimir Putin By Richard Miller (London)

The controversial interview that Tucker Carlson was to conduct with Vladimir Putin, has now appeared on YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fOCWBhuDdDo&t=1301s

The interview is perhaps somewhat odd to listen to, as Putin begins, right from the start to give an outline of Russian history, taking up about 40 minutes. This might be hard to take in, seeing what is the point? Tucker in the introduction says that they initially thought it was just a filler. But, as I see it, what is shown here is that Putin attempts to show that the Ukraine was very much a historical construction, and that there is a historical precedent that the lands where majority Russians live, is part of the motherland of Russia. As Putin goes on, the present war is about regaining what was Russia's territory, to which it has an historical claim, or so he believes. Putin claimed that parts of Ukraine along the Black Sea "have no historical connection to Ukraine whatsoever."

There was also the obvious point made that the eastern expansion of NATO as a reason for a "rift" between western countries and Russia, saying that "the promise was that NATO would not expand eastward but it happened five times." This posed an existential threat to Russia as the Ukraine entering NATO, would mean nuclear weapons on Russia's doorstep. We have heard this argument made in the West by a few academics such as Seymour Hersh.

Overall, there is not much new from the interview. The interesting turn of events is what will happen to Tucker Carlson, who has already been put on the Ukraine kill list, as documented in another article at the blog today. I have seen anger from Democrats that Tucker has engaged in espionage, treason, you name it. We will see what happens. But at least, today, one journalist has done his job.