Tucker Carlson Interview of Vladimir Putin - Part 5

U.S. State Department/CIA Backed Ukrainian Revolutions 2004-5 and 2014

Tucker Carlson: 2014?

Vladimir Putin: Before that [2004-5, See paragraph after my background commentaries.]

Background Commentary 1. Tucker Carlson thought Vladimir Putin was talking about the 2014 coup in Ukraine, which deposed Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, who had been duly elected president in 2010. Yanukovych was a former Prime Minister and Governor of predominantly Russian ethnic Donetsk oblast. He was for Ukrainian military and economic neutrality and good relations with Russia and the European Union. His unconstitutional removal from office is often called the Maidan Revolution, which came with several mass demonstrations on February 18-23, 2014. The largest of these occurred over several days in the Independence Square (Maidan) in Kyiv. There were definitive telephone conversations recorded by Russian Intelligence about two weeks before this, which can still be found on YouTube, that confirm the U.S. State Department approved, largely funded, and encouraged this coup. Thirteen Interior Ministry riot police and 108 civilian demonstrators were killed, a large proportion by snipers firing from at least three buildings, including Hotel Ukrainia, occupied by Svoboda Party members. This coup d’état involved U.S. Under Secretary of State Victoria Nuland, and U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt. Later conversations directly involved pressure on Yanukovych to resign by Vice President Joe Biden.  Biden’s VP Defense Advisor, now his Presidential Defense Advisor, Jake Sullivan, was heavily involved.  It is logical that this coup had the approval of President Obama.

The CIA was involved, certainly through the $5.0 billion spent on “democratizing” Ukraine by the U.S. Agency for International Development (AID). According to the Epoch Times, billionaire financier George Soros has spent more than $1 billion in Ukraine to “promote democracy” and defeat Russia.  British Intelligence MI6 was also probably involved. Nuland primarily encouraged the coup through the extreme anti-Russian Svoboda Party and Right Sector factions known for political violence, who were also financed by Ukrainian billionaire Oligarch Ihor Kolomoysky, later a supporter of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. The relatively small Svoboda (Freedom) Party got over 10 percent of the vote and  37 of the 450 seats in the Rada (Parliament) in the 2012 primary elections. They are strongest in western Ukraine and are frequently associated with Nazi support against the Russians in World War II.  According to Canadian Professor Ivan Katchanovsky, who was at Maidan,  there is strong evidence that Right Sector snipers from Svoboda and the Oligarchic related Fatherland Party, not the police, killed a large portion of the slain protestors.

Victoria Nuland was promoted to Acting  U.S. Deputy Secretary of State in July 2023 but resigned on February 12, 2024.

Commentary 2 : The Orange Revolution was in 2004-2005. Viktor Yanukovych’s first election as President of Ukraine was overturned by a special vote of the Ukrainian Supreme Court, although he had won the second or runoff election by nearly 3 percent with 49.6 percent of the vote. However, complaints of irregularities and political pressures from outside Ukraine caused the Ukrainian Supreme Court to void the election. In the new election, pro-Western Viktor Yushchenko won by almost 5 percent.  

Commentary 3: According to Professor Jeffrey Sachs, on Endgame 175 in February 2024, studies show the CIA engaged in 70 regime changes in foreign countries from its founding in 1947 through 1989. Sixty-four of these were convert. According to Sachs, the CIA has accelerated its regime change diplomacy since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. Sachs recently estimated the CIA has been involved in over 80 regime changes. See books by Professor Kenneth Osgood, at Colorado School of Mines. One of his lectures can be seen on C-Span3 American History TV dated January 14, 2019.  According to Osgood, the CIA backs candidates in foreign elections, engineers regime changes and government overthrows, and threatens allied leaders with CIA opposition, unless they comply with U.S. policies.

Vladimir Putin: Before that. No, this was before that. After President Kuchma, Viktor Yanukovich won the elections. However, his opponents did not recognize that victory, the US supported the opposition, and the third round was scheduled. What is this? This is a coup. The US supported it, and the winner of the third round came to power. Imagine if in the US, something was not to someone’s liking and the third round of election, which the US Constitution does not provide for, was organized. Nonetheless, it was done in Ukraine. Okay, Viktor Yushchenko who was considered a pro-Western politician, came to power. Fine, we have built relations with him as well. He came to Moscow with visits, we visited Kiev. I visited it too. We met in an informal setting. If he is pro-Western, so be it. It’s fine, let people do their job. The situation should develop inside the independent Ukraine itself. As a result of Kuchma’s leadership, things got worse and Viktor Yanukovich came to power after all. [Leonid Kuchma was President of Ukraine 199-2005.]

Maybe he wasn’t the best President and politician. I don’t know, I don’t want to give assessments. However, the issue of the association with the EU came up. We have always been lenient to this: suit yourself. But when we read through that treaty of association it turned out to be a problem for us, since we had a free-trade zone and open customs borders with Ukraine which, under this association, had to open its borders for Europe, which could have led to flooding of our market.

We said, “No, this is not going to work. We shall close our borders with Ukraine then.” The customs borders, that is. Yanukovich started to calculate how much Ukraine was going to gain, how much to lose and said to his European partners: “I need more time to think before signing.” The moment he said that the opposition began to take destructive steps which were supported by the West. It all came down to Maidan and a coup in Ukraine.

Tucker Carlson: So, he did more trade with Russia than with the EU? Ukraine did…

Vladimir Putin: Of course. It’s not even the matter of trade volume, although for the most part it is. It is the matter of cooperation ties which the entire Ukrainian economy was based on. The cooperation ties between the enterprises were very close since the times of the Soviet Union. One enterprise there used to produce components to be assembled both in Russia and Ukraine and vice versa. There used to be very close ties.

A coup d’état was committed, although, I shall not delve into details now as I find doing it inappropriate. The US told us, “Calm Yanukovich down and we will calm the opposition. Let the situation unfold in the scenario of a political settlement.” We said, “Alright. Agreed. Let’s do it this way.” As the Americans requested us, Yanukovich did use neither the Armed Forces, nor the police, yet the armed opposition committed a coup in Kiev. What is that supposed to mean? “Who do you think you are?,” I wanted to ask the then US leadership.

Tucker Carlson: With the backing of whom?

Vladimir Putin: With the backing of the CIA, of course. The organization you wanted to join back in the day, as I understand. Maybe we should thank God they didn’t let you in. Although, it is a serious organization. I understand. My former vis-à-vis, in the sense that I served in the First Main Directorate – Soviet Union’s intelligence service. They have always been our opponents. A job is a job.

Technically they did everything right, they achieved their goal of changing the government. However, from political standpoint, it was a colossal mistake. Surely, it was political leadership’s miscalculation. They should have seen what it would evolve into.

So, in 2008 the doors of NATO were opened for Ukraine. In 2014, there was a coup, they started persecuting those who did not accept the coup, and it was indeed a coup, they created a threat to Crimea which we had to take under our protection. They launched a war in Donbass in 2014 with the use of aircraft and artillery against civilians. This is when it started. There is a video of aircraft attacking Donetsk from above. They launched a large-scale military operation, then another one. When they failed, they started to prepare the next one. All this against the background of military development of this territory and opening of NATO’s doors.

Commentary 4: At the April 2008 NATO Summit in Bucharest, Rumania, the U.S. began to push for Georgia and Ukraine to be candidates for NATO admission, although they had been warned by then U.S. Russian Ambassador William J. Burns (now CIA Director)  that this was a serious Red Line for the Russians. His famous memo to the George W. Bush Administration was “Nyet means nyet.” (“No means no’ in Russian). Germany, France, and several smaller NATO members strongly suggested Georgia and Ukraine admission would be a dangerous provocation. However, they were pressured out of their opposition.

Vladimir Putin: How could we not express concern over what was happening? From our side, this would have been a culpable negligence – that’s what it would have been. It’s just that the US political leadership pushed us to the line we could not cross because doing so could have ruined Russia itself. Besides, we could not leave our brothers in faith and, in fact, a part of the Russian people, in the face of this “war machine.”

Tucker Carlson: So, that was eight years before the current conflict started. What was the trigger for you? What was the moment where you decided you had to do this?

Vladimir Putin: Initially, it was the coup in Ukraine that provoked the conflict.

By the way, back then the representatives of three European countries – Germany, Poland and France – arrived. They were the guarantors of the signed agreement between the Government of Yanukovich and the opposition. They signed it as guarantors. Despite that, the opposition committed a coup and all these countries pretended that they didn’t remember that they were guarantors of peaceful settlement. They just threw it in the stove right away and nobody recalls that.

I don’t know if the US knows anything about that agreement between the opposition and the authorities and its three guarantors who, instead of bringing this whole situation back in the political field, supported the coup. Although, it was meaningless, believe me, because President Yanukovich agreed to all conditions. He was ready to hold an early election which he had no chance to win, frankly speaking. Everyone knew that. Then why the coup, why the victims? Why threatening Crimea? Why launching an operation in Donbass? This I do not understand. That is exactly what the miscalculation is. The CIA did its job to complete the coup. I think one of the Deputy Secretaries of State said that it cost a large sum of money, almost $5 billion. But the political mistake was colossal! Why would they have to do that? All this could have been done legally, without victims, without military action, without losing Crimea. We would have never considered to even lift a finger, if it hadn’t been for the bloody developments on Maidan.

Because we agreed with the fact that after the collapse of the Soviet Union our borders should be along the borders of former Union’s republics. We agreed to that. But we never agreed to NATO’s expansion and moreover we never agreed that Ukraine would be in NATO. We did not agree to NATO bases there without any discussion with us. For decades we kept asking: don’t do this, don’t do that.

And what triggered the latest events? Firstly, the current Ukrainian leadership declared that it would not implement the Minsk Agreements, which had been signed, as you know, after the events of 2014, in Minsk, where the plan of peaceful settlement in Donbass was set forth. But no, the current Ukrainian leadership, Foreign Minister, all other officials and then the President himself said that they don’t like anything about the Minsk Agreements. In other words, they were not going to implement it. A year or a year and a half ago, former leaders of Germany and France said openly to the whole world that they indeed signed the Minsk Agreements but they never intended to implement them. They simply led us by the nose.

Tucker Carlson: Was there anyone free to talk to? Did you call the US President, Secretary of State and say if you keep militarizing Ukraine with NATO forces, we are going to act?

Vladimir Putin: We talked about this all the time. We addressed the United States’ and European countries’ leadership to stop these developments immediately, to implement the Minsk Agreements. Frankly speaking, I didn’t know how we were going to do this but I was ready to implement them. These Agreements were complicated for Ukraine; they included lots of elements of those Donbass territories’ independence. That’s true. However, I was absolutely confident, and I am saying this to you now: I honestly believed that if we managed to convince the residents of Donbass – and we had to work hard to convince them to return to the Ukrainian statehood – then gradually the wounds would start to heal. When this part of territory reintegrated itself into a common social environment, when the pensions and social benefits were paid again, all the pieces would gradually fall into place.

No, nobody wanted that, everybody wanted to resolve the issue by military force only. But we could not let that happen. And the situation got to the point, when the Ukrainian side announced: ”No, we will not do anything“. They also started preparing for military action. It was they who started the war in 2014. Our goal is to stop this war. And we did not start this war in 2022. This is an attempt to stop it.