Russian President Vladimir V. Putin has used his spy agencies to interfere in elections and sent diplomats to build relationships with Kremlin-friendly politicians to woo Western allies. I have been trying for decades to get it.
On Thursday, the world witnessed a redundant new chapter in these efforts. It was Mr. Putin’s two-hour interview taped in the Kremlin’s Gilded Hall with one of America’s most prominent and most divisive conservative commentators.
In a conversation with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, Putin called on the United States to “make a deal” to cede Ukrainian territory to Russia to end the war. He echoes politics like former President Donald J. Trump’s insistence that the United States has more pressing priorities than war, just as Republican lawmakers are touting aid to Ukraine on Capitol Hill. He repeated his arguments and tried to appeal directly to American conservatives. Many miles away.
“Isn’t there something better?” Putin said in response to Carlson’s question about the possibility of American soldiers fighting in Ukraine. “We have border issues, we have immigration issues, we have national debt issues.”
He continued, “Wouldn’t it be better to negotiate with Russia?”
Much of the interview constitutes a familiar Kremlin history lesson about Russia’s historical claims to lands in Eastern Europe that began in the 9th century, and Mr. Putin has done little to try to get it to American ears. I didn’t try. He shared his opinions on artificial intelligence, Genghis Khan, and the Roman Empire. He also offered a well-worn and false justification for invading Ukraine, claiming that Russia’s goal was to “stop this war” that the West says it is waging against Russia.
But Putin was more outspoken than usual about his belief that an agreement with the West, rather than a military victory, would end the invasion of Ukraine. At the end of the interview, Mr. Putin told Mr. Karlsson that the time had come to talk about ending the war because “the powers in the West have come to realize” that Russia cannot be defeated on the battlefield.
“If that’s the case, if that realization emerges, then they have to think about what to do next. We are ready for this dialogue,” Putin said.
In response to a question from Mr. Carlson about whether NATO could accept Russian control over some areas of Ukraine, Mr. Putin said: If you have the will, you have options. ”
The original Russian version of Putin’s comments was not immediately released, leaving viewers to rely on Karlsson’s on-air dubbed translation.
The interview on Tuesday was Putin’s first with Western media since the start of the full-scale war in Ukraine, and his first with U.S. media since 2021. During his first 20 years in power, his spokesman said the Kremlin had chosen Karlsson this time because these traditional news organizations took an “exclusively unilateral position” on Russia. He said that.
Rather than rely on the fiery rhetoric he has used before domestic audiences, Mr. Putin offered an olive branch to the West. Mr. Carlson was given an opportunity to expand on his efforts to portray Russia as a defender of “traditional values” against a country he often portrays as a decadent and declining West, but the Russian president is uncharacteristically restrained. was. “Western society is more pragmatic,” he says. “Russians think more about eternity, about moral values.”
He added that there was “nothing wrong” with the Western path, noting that it had brought “huge successes in production, even in science.” This reflected Mr. Putin’s insistence over the past two years that his conflict was not with the West as a whole, but with the ruling elites seeking to maintain global hegemony.
After days of breathless anticipation, Russian state news media published an interview on Thursday, documenting Karlsson’s every move in Moscow, right down to the double cheeseburger he reportedly ordered from his former McDonald’s. . The uproar reveals the Kremlin’s continued desire to appeal to Western audiences, despite Mr. Putin’s intermittent threats to use nuclear weapons and Russia’s arrest last year of American journalist Evan Gershkovitch. I made it.
Putin addressed both of these issues in the interview, clearly trying to suggest that Moscow and Washington could find common ground. He told Carlson that Russia has no interest in attacking NATO’s eastern bloc, contrary to warnings from some Western officials.
“We are not interested in Poland, Latvia or anywhere else,” Putin said. “It’s just an act of intimidation.”
Mr. Carlson has pressed Mr. Putin to release Mr. Gershkovych, a Wall Street Journal correspondent whom Russia arrested last year on spying charges, a charge the newspaper and the U.S. government vehemently deny. Mr. Putin said “dialogue is continuing” about his fate, hinting that the Kremlin was waiting for a favorable offer from the United States to release him as part of a prisoner exchange.
Taken together, Mr. Putin’s rise comes at a moment of vulnerability for his adversaries, with Ukraine struggling on the battlefield, further military aid stalled in the U.S. Congress, and pro-Kremlin politicians on both sides of the Atlantic. This emphasizes Putin’s tactical confidence in the midst of the crisis. The most likely of these politicians is Trump, the Republican presidential front-runner whom Carlson frequently praises but did not ask about in the interview.
Tatyana Stanovaya, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Russia and Eurasia Center, said the combination of circumstances meant that the interview with Karlsson took place at a time when Putin was feeling “high on time.” He said he meant it.
Stanovaya said Putin’s current goals appear to be to secure a peace deal for Ukraine that consolidates Russia’s control over territory it has already captured, and to establish a friendly government in Kiev, the Ukrainian capital. But to achieve that, Putin seems to think the United States needs to pressure Ukraine to negotiate an end to the war, rather than continue to resist Russian aggression.
“He believes he has an opportunity now,” she said.
In fact, Mr. Putin, in an interview first posted on Mr. Carlson’s website and later published in , repeatedly predicted that Ukraine would need to be persuaded. Ukrainian leaders to negotiate.
“We should tell the current leadership of Ukraine to stop and come to the negotiating table,” Putin said. After a few minutes, he added: “This endless mobilization, hysteria and internal problems in Ukraine will come to an agreement sooner or later.”
But it was never clear whether that message would get through to American audiences. Rather, many viewers were struck by the length of Putin’s monologue about Russia’s history at the beginning of the interview — a perspective already well known from the president’s many speeches and writings over the years. Putin has elaborated on topics such as the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the arrival of Christianity in Eastern Europe to justify his territorial claims in Ukraine.
“He wasn’t saying anything new,” said Nina L. Khrushchev, a professor of international studies at the New School in New York and a great-granddaughter of Soviet leader Nikita S. Khrushchev. Russians are used to his history lessons, she continued, but American viewers “must be going crazy with the redundancy of this history.”
neil mfarquhar and Michael M. Greenbaum Contributed to the report.