Tucker Carlson Interview of Vladimir Putin - Part 9

US Leadership and Promises, Ukrainian Cultural Conflict, Radical Influences on Zelensky

At the end of Part 8 of this series, Tucker Carlson had asked Vladimir Putin whether working with different U.S. presidents had made a difference in US-Russian relations. Putin said that his relations with G.W. Bush were cordial even though Bush had pushed for Ukrainian membership in NATO in 2008, and that his relations with Trump were cordial as well. Relations with Biden had evidently been more difficult.

Vladimir Putin continues: It is not about the personality of the leader; it is about the elites’ 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 U.S. still has today, then, perhaps, something may change.

Look, China's economy has become the first economy in the world in purchasing power parity; in terms of volume it overtook the US a long time ago. The USA comes second, then India--one and a half billion people, and then Japan, with Russia in the fifth place. Russia was the first economy in Europe last year, despite all the sanctions and restrictions. Is this normal, from your point of view: sanctions, restrictions, impossibility of payments in dollars, being cut off from SWIFT [banking and money transfer] services, sanctions against our ships carrying oil, sanctions against airplanes, sanctions in everything, everywhere? The largest number of sanctions in the world which are applied–are applied against Russia. And we have become Europe's first economy during this time.

The tools that the US uses don't work. Well, one has to think about what to do. If this realization comes to the ruling elites, then yes, then the first person of the state will act in anticipation of what the voters and the people who make decisions at various levels expect from this person. Then maybe something will change.

Tucker Carlson: But you are describing two different systems. You say that the leader acts in the interests of the voters, but you also say that these decisions are not made by the leader – they are made by the ruling classes. You have run this country for so long, you have known all these American presidents. What are those power centers in the United States, do you think? And who actually makes the decisions?

Vladimir Putin: I don't know. America is a complex country, conservative on the one hand, rapidly changing on the other. It's not easy for us to sort it all out.

Who makes decisions in the elections--is it possible to understand this, when each state has its own legislation, each state regulates itself, someone can be excluded from the elections at the state level. It is a two-stage electoral system, it is very difficult for us to understand it.

Certainly, there are two parties that are dominant, the Republicans and the Democrats, and within this party system, the centers that make decisions, that prepare decisions.

Then, look, why, in my opinion, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, such an erroneous, crude, completely unjustified policy of pressure was pursued against Russia? After all, this is a policy of pressure. NATO expansion, support for the separatists in the Caucasus, creation of a missile defense system – these are all elements of pressure. Pressure, pressure, pressure.

Commentary: As previously explained  briefly in part 4 of this series, in order to achieve the unification of  Soviet occupied East Germany with West Germany, formerly occupied by French, British, and American forces following World War II,  U.S. Secretary of State James Baker promised Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev on February 9, 1990, that there would be no expansion of NATO beyond Germany. There is documentary proof that Gorbachev also received assurances on this by U.S. President George H.W. Bush, German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, German Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, her successor John Major, British Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd, French President Francois Mitterrand, U.S CIA Director Robert Gates, and NATO Secretary General Manfred Worner. Yet the U.S later ignored this with the excuse that the promise was not part of formal treaty.

Bringing NATO closer to the borders of the Russian Federation was considered an existential threat by Russian leadership because it left no buffer zone against nuclear attack, reducing the warning time needed to determine whether Russia was under nuclear attack, increasing the likelihood of nuclear war and reducing the alternative responses to immediate massive retaliation or even pre-emptory attack.  

Putin and Russian leadership were particularly disturbed in 2001 and formally in 2002, when George H. W. Bush unilaterally withdrew from the ABM Treaty intended to limit the use of anti-ballistic defensive missiles (also capable to offensive use)  in order to deploy possible dual-use anti-ballistic missiles in Eastern Europe. Moreover, the U.S. gradually withdrew from all Cold War arms control agreements, increasing Russian national security concerns. However, the Russian economy had only begun to recover from its 1991 collapse and two Chechen wars (1994-1996, and 1999-2000) in 2002, leaving the Russians alarmed but without realistic power to push back against NATO expansion and its consequently increased nuclear threat to Russia.  

On February 10, 2007, with the Russian economy having recovered, Vladimir Putin began to push back on national security in a speech at the Munich Security Forum. This is considered to be a major turning point in Russian security policy, marking Russia’s increased confidence as a major economic and military power. Putin accused the United States of using bullying tactics in its foreign policy. The astonished Western powers, especially the U.S. and UK, through their intelligence agencies, then launched a comprehensive demonization campaign against Vladimir Putin, which has been slavishly adopted by most Western media. The Western narrative ignores the importance to Russia of the combined threat of NATO expansion and progressive abandonment of security treaties by the United States. Putin has been so demonized by the CIA, British MI6, Hillary Clinton campaign strategies, and a compliant media, that his image in the minds of American and Western European public is in many cases the opposite of the truth or immensely distorted. This is not only extremely dishonest and dangerous but devastatingly counter-productive to rational discussion and sound American foreign policy. The situation was exacerbated in 2008 by G.W. Bush’s push for NATO membership for Georgia and Ukraine at the Bucharest NATO Summit. This was at first strongly opposed by Germany and France.

Vladimir Putin continues:

Then, dragging Ukraine into NATO is all about pressure, pressure, pressure. Why? I think, among other things, because excessive production capacities were created. During the confrontation with the Soviet Union, there were many centers created and specialists on the Soviet Union, who could not do anything else. It seemed to them, they convinced the political leadership: it is necessary to continue ”chiseling“ Russia, to try to break it up, to create on this territory several quasi-state entities and to subdue them in a divided form, to use their combined potential for the future struggle with China. This is a mistake, including the excessive potential of those who worked for the confrontation with the Soviet Union. It is necessary to get rid of this, there should be new, fresh forces, people who look into the future and understand what is happening in the world.

See how Indonesia is developing! 600 million people. Where can we get away from this? Nowhere. We just have to assume that Indonesia will join, it is already joining, the club of the world’s leading economies, no matter how it is – whether someone likes it or not.

Yes, we understand and are aware that in the United States, despite all the economic problems, the situation is still normal with the economy growing decently, the GDP is growing by 2.5 percent, if I am not mistaken.

But if we want to ensure the future, then we need to change our approach to what is changing. As I already said, the world would nevertheless change regardless of how the developments in Ukraine end. The world is changing. In the United States themselves, experts write that the United States are nonetheless gradually changing their position in the world, it is your experts who write that, I just read them. The only question is how this would happen – painfully and quickly or gently and gradually. And this is written by people who are not anti-American; they simply follow global development trends. That's it.

And in order to assess them and change policies, we need people who think, look forward, can analyze and recommend certain decisions at the level of political leaders.

Tucker Carlson: I just have to ask. You have said clearly that NATO expansion eastward is a violation of the promise you were all made in the 1990s. It is a threat to your country. Right before you sent troops into Ukraine the Vice-President of the United States spoke at the Security Conference and encouraged the President of Ukraine to join NATO. Do you think that was an effort to provoke you into military action?

Vladimir Putin: 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 listened to us. And moreover, the Ukrainian leaders who were under the 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.

In Ukraine, they announced that the [ethnic] Russians [in Ukraine] were a non-titular nation [without or with only limited civil rights] and at the same time passed [further] laws that [specifically] limited the rights of non-titular nations. Ukraine, having received all these southeastern territories as a gift from the Russian people, suddenly announced that the Russians were a non-titular nationality [had no rights] in that territory. Is it normal? All this put together led to the decision to end the war that neo-Nazis started in Ukraine in 2014.

Commentary: In April 2019, although only 60 percent of Ukrainians consider Ukrainian their native language, the Ukrainian Rada (Parliament) passed a law making Ukrainian the state language and severely restricting the use of Russian language and suppressing Russian culture and history. Under this law, the Russians who had been the native majority of southeastern Ukraine for centuries were classified as a non-indigenous population with limited civil rights. President Biden and other U.S. officials helped gain official recognition for the Ukrainian based Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU) in October 2021 to help solidify Ukrainian nationalism. In October 2023, the Rada banned the largest Ukrainian church, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC) because of its ties with the Moscow Patriarchate. Both the Russian Orthodox Church and UOC are much more Biblically and socially conservative than the secularized OCU.

Tucker Carlson: Do you think Zelensky has the freedom to negotiate the settlement to this conflict?

Vladimir Putin: I don’t know the details, of course it’s difficult for me to judge, but I believe he has, in any case, he used to have. His father fought against the fascists, Nazis, during World War II, I once talked to him about this. I said: “Volodya, what are you doing? Why are you supporting neo-Nazis in Ukraine today, while your father fought against fascism? He was a front-line soldier.” I will not tell you what he answered, this is a separate topic, and I think it’s incorrect for me to do so.

Commentary: According to the National World War II Museum in New Orleans, there were 1.5 million Jews living in Ukraine in 1939. This swelled to 2.45 million in 1941, about 6 percent of the population. The Nazis shot and killed at close range an estimated 1.5 million of them from June 1941 through November 1942. (Jennifer Popowycz, January 2022). About 250,000 Ukrainians fought on the Nazi side against the Soviet Red Army. About 94 percent of the 12,000 men of the Nazi SS 14^th Waffen-Grenadier Division that participated in such atrocities against Jews, Russians, and Poles were Ukrainian. However, the vast majority of Ukrainian soldiers, as many as 6.0 million, served in the Soviet Red Army.

Vladimir Putin continues. But as to the freedom of choice—why not? He [Zelensky] came to power on the expectations of Ukrainian people that he would lead Ukraine to peace. He talked about this; it was thanks to this that he won the election overwhelmingly. But then, when he came to power, in my opinion, he realized two things: firstly, it is better not to clash with neo-Nazis and nationalists, because they are aggressive and very active, you can expect anything from them, and secondly, the US-led West supports them and will always support those who antagonize with Russia—It is beneficial and safe. So he took the relevant position, despite promising his people to end the war in Ukraine. He deceived his voters.

Commentary: According to retired Swiss intelligence officer and former NATO consultant, Col. Jacques Baud. as well as the American media outlet, The Hill (Les Golinkin, 9-11-2017),  any mention of Neo-Nazi influence in the present Ukrainian regime “is systematically dismissed as Russian propaganda by [Western] media, journalists, and politicians,” but “this is not simply Russian Propaganda.” The influence of the extreme nationalist Ukrainian National Guard (estimated 60,000 to 90,000 strength) and its elite Azov military/police units, with total strength  numbering over 3,000 personnel is formidable. Both report to the Interior Ministry rather than the Army. This will be discussed more fully in a coming part of this series. The Azov units, known for their ruthless conduct and supremacist mindset, are also closely aligned with Ukrainian intelligence agencies associated with terrorism and false-flag atrocities. The leadership of the Ukrainian National Guard has threatened Ukrainian President Zelensky, warning him not to compromise on pre-2014 Ukrainian borders or abandon 2014 objectives for the “Ukrainization” of Ukraine.