Here are the lessons learned from President Putin’s meeting with Carlson:
- Putin isn’t done with the war
The main message that President Putin was trying to convey to the American people is that there is no point in giving Ukraine more money and weapons. And while Carlson himself has long had doubts about U.S. support for Ukraine as it seeks to defend its people and homeland in the face of Russian aggression, he was happy to help get that message across.
“If we really want to stop fighting, we have to stop supplying weapons. It will be over in a few weeks. That’s it,” Putin insisted, adding that it was up to the US to tell Ukraine to come to the negotiating table. He added.
But this is not the whole real story, as Putin’s own two eloquent responses to Karlsson’s follow-up questions made clear.
First, when asked whether Russia had achieved its war objectives, President Putin answered, “No.” We have not yet achieved our goal, as one of those goals is denazification. ” Claims that Russia aims to “denazify” Ukraine are widely seen as code for the removal of the country’s democratically elected (Jewish) president Volodymyr Zelenskiy. President Putin emphasized the meaning of his own comments, saying that “we must eliminate” those who baselessly claimed to “support” Nazism.
Second, when Karlsson asked if President Putin would be “happy with the territory you have now,” the Russian dictator refused to answer, returning to the point about denazification and answering the previous question. He claimed that the answer to the question is not yet complete. I accept that as another no.