It is now confirmed: Tucker Carlson will interview Vladimir Putin ” shortly “even becoming the first foreign journalist to engage in this exercise since the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. The former Fox News channel, figure of the American conservative right, made the announcement on Tuesday 6 February evening, in a video with Trumpist overtones – conspiratorial and complacent with Moscow – broadcast on the social networkwhich suggests the content of the interview itself.
“The media are corrupt, they lie to their readers and listeners”he argues, criticizing the interviews “sycophants” of Volodymyr Zelensky or regretting that “not a single Western journalist bothered to interview” Vladimir Putin – a picture that omits both the recent very harsh articles in the American press regarding the Ukrainian president and the fact that access even to Russia has become difficult for representatives of the American media, which number two of theirs in prison.
The host also accuses the Biden administration of having tried on several occasions to prevent this meeting, including by using illegal means. “We are not here because we love Vladimir Putin. We are here because we love America. We want them to remain prosperous and free.”he concludes, after having assured several times that “Americans pay” for the war in Ukraine.
Since his arrival in Moscow on February 3, there has been little doubt about the prospect of such an interview. The Russian media scrutinize Tucker Carlson’s every move, with each trip – to the Bolshoi or to a propaganda exhibition dear to Vladimir Putin – making the headlines. On Monday February 5, he was seen leaving a presidential administration building.
Bad blow to Biden
The journalist is considered an old friend in Russia. His interventions on Fox News and, since April 2023, on In March 2022, the host went so far as to take up Moscow’s accusations on the installation in Ukraine of American laboratories producing “biological weapons”.
With such an interview, as risk-free as the one carried out in his time by the filmmaker Oliver Stone, the Kremlin is primarily addressing the Russian public. But it is also a way for Vladimir Putin to continue to whisper in the ear of a part of the American public, who is favorable to him, and a bad blow aimed at Joe Biden. This interview comes very timely at a time when Donald Trump, to whom Mr. Carlson is close, is doing everything in Washington to maintain the blockage of American aid to Ukraine.
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