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Boris Johnson has attacked Tucker Carlson’s interview with President Putin, saying it came out of “Hitler’s playbook”.
American broadcasters, he said, were “the agents of a tyrant, the dictator’s dictator, and the traitors to journalism.”
He accused the former Fox News host of betraying “viewers and listeners around the world” by not taking on the Russian leader’s mission to “torture, rape and bomb kindergartens” in Ukraine, adding: “He He never tried to do anything like that.” Stop the flow of lies,” he said in a Mail+ column.
Putin’s message to America was straight out of Hitler’s playbook: “Let’s stay out of this conflict… and soon we’ll all be at peace.”
The only difference, he suggested, was that Hitler conveyed his message in June 1940, immediately after the invasion of France, through W. R. Hearst’s newspaper and a German-American journalist called von Wiegand.
Earlier, Rishi Sunak slammed Putin’s claims that the West and NATO were to blame for the war in Ukraine, calling them “patently absurd”.
Mr Johnson also attacked claims that the British government persuaded Ukrainians to continue fighting rather than surrender in the wake of the spring 2022 invasion.
“No one could and will stop those lion-hearted Ukrainians from fighting for their homeland,” he said.
He said he hopes and believes that if re-elected, President Trump will “confuse his critics… (and) arm the Ukrainians.”
This pool photo shared by Russian state news agency Sputnik shows Russian President Vladimir Putin interviewing American talk show host Tucker Carlson at the Kremlin in Moscow on February 6, 2024.
(POOL/AFP via Getty Images)
And to the Republican politicians who are currently blocking aid to Ukraine, he said: “Please remember who you are. You are the successors of Ronald Reagan and the last He is a leader of hope.”
The two-hour, seven-minute interview began with a lengthy diatribe from Putin about Russia’s history and relations with Ukraine.
The White House warned against believing “anything” Putin said in the interview.
Former Prime Minister Boris Johnson was one of the first Western leaders to visit Kiev after Russia invaded Ukraine. But he also faced criticism for his plans to visit the war-torn country after he leaves office. The Independent revealed that senior military officials believed he was “publicity seeking” in a combat zone and urged him not to go.