Russian President Vladimir Putin said he “did not get complete satisfaction” from his interview with Tucker Carlson as the fired Fox News host failed to challenge him.
Putin, 71, appeared on Russian state television Wednesday, sitting down for talks with propagandist Pavel Zarubin.
“To be honest, I thought he would be more aggressive and ask tough questions,” the autocrat said of the 54-year-old Carlson.
‘And not only was I prepared for that, I wanted it, because it would have given me the opportunity to respond in kind, which, in my opinion, would have added some specificity to our conversation. But he chose a different tactic.
Putin then went on to describe Carlson’s passivity.
Russian President Vladimir Putin appeared on Russian state television on Wednesday and said he was “not completely satisfied” with his interview with Tucker Carlson.
The autocrat sat down with the former Fox News personality for an exchange that lasted more than two hours, monologuing about Russian history and blaming Ukraine for starting the war.
Putin told Russian propagandist Pavel Zarubin that he expected Carlson to be “more aggressive” and “ask tough questions.”
“He tried to interrupt me several times, but still, surprisingly for a Western journalist, he was patient and listened to my long answers, especially about history,” he said.
And it gave me no reason to do what I was prepared to do. Honestly, I didn’t get complete satisfaction from that interview.’
During the more than two-hour conversation with the conservative pundit, Putin monologued about Russia’s history and aired his grievances about past and present American leaders.
‘Are we having a talk show or a conversation?’ —the president growled shortly after the start of the interview.
The agreement marked his first interview with an American journalist since before the Russian invasion of Ukraine nearly two years ago.
According to the Kremlin, Putin agreed to sit down with Carlson because his stance on the Russo-Ukrainian war differed from the “one-sided” reporting of many Western media outlets.
The Russian leader used the time to speak at length about the conflict, blaming Ukraine for starting it, a claim Carlson did not dispute.
“We were protecting our people, ourselves, our homeland and our future,” Putin said in justifying the February 2022 invasion, the largest attack on a European country since World War II.
Carlson was unchallenging when it came to Putin’s claims about the Russo-Ukrainian war.
“He was patient and listened to my long answers, especially about history,” Putin said of the conservative expert during his television appearance.
He also partly blamed the United States for the ongoing war.
‘If you really want to stop fighting, you have to stop supplying weapons. It will be over in a few weeks. That’s it,’ she said.
He further stated that Russia had not achieved its war goals “because one of them is denazification.”
The term is widely considered code for removing Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the country’s first Jewish president.
Putin refused to answer when Carlson asked if he would be “satisfied” with the territory Russia now has.
After a lengthy history lesson in which he attempted to demonstrate that Ukraine had always been part of Russia, the autocrat unleashed his scathing criticism of the United States, claiming that generations of presidents had failed to reach a security consensus.
He said he had enjoyed a “personal relationship” with Donald Trump and George W. Bush and claimed to not remember when he last spoke with President Biden.
‘Do I have to remember everything?’ Putin said. ‘I have my own things to do. We have internal political issues.’
When asked why he had not spoken to Biden, Putin said: “Why should I call him? What should I talk to him about? Or beg him why?
He clarified that ‘certain contacts are maintained’ between both countries.
The Russian president characterized Carlson as passive and said he “did not give me reason to do what I was prepared to do.”
During the interview, Putin urged the United States to stop supplying weapons to Ukraine, a position echoed by Carlson and amplified by the Kremlin’s propaganda media.
The interview was the first with an American journalist since before the Russian invasion of Ukraine almost two years ago.
Carlson has historically been soft on Russia, even speaking in support of the country. His attacks on the Biden administration’s aid to Ukraine have been regularly broadcast through the Kremlin’s propaganda outlets.
Appearing at the World Government Summit this week, Carlson said he had been trying to get an interview with the Russian leader for three years.
“I wanted to interview Putin because he is the leader of a country that the United States government is at war with,” the television personality explained.
He further claimed that the government “prevented him from doing so by spying on (his) text messages and leaking them to the New York Times.”
This appeared to reference the messages that started a chain of events that ultimately led to his firing from Fox News.
While they were written up in legal documents and published in their entirety by the outlet, they had no apparent connection to his interview with Putin.
“My country’s intelligence services were working against me illegally,” Carlson insisted.
He made similar unsubstantiated claims in 2021, when he claimed that the National Security Agency planned to leak his communications in an attempt to get him off the air.