The White House said on Wednesday that Vladimir Putin should not be given a new mouthpiece to justify the Ukraine war, after right-wing US talk show host Tucker Carlson interviewed the Russian president. .
The former Fox News host, a key ally of 2024 presidential candidate Donald Trump and a vocal opponent of U.S. military aid to Kiev, has been in contact with President Putin since the February 2022 invasion of Russia. He traveled to Moscow for his first interview with a Western journalist.
National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters on Air Force One: “Who knows what Mr. Putin did in Ukraine and the completely bogus and ridiculous reasons he tried to justify it.” It should be obvious to anyone.”
“I don’t think we need another interview to understand President Vladimir Putin’s brutality.”
Carlson did not say when the interview would air, but said it would be free to watch. After being fired from Fox News last year, he started a show on the Elon Musk-owned social media platform X (formerly Twitter).
Mr. Carlson’s visit to Moscow was widely covered by Russian state media, which has long highlighted anti-Ukrainian stories by American celebrities.
Karlsson’s access to President Vladimir Putin stands in sharp contrast to the detention of other foreign journalists in Russia. Two Americans are currently imprisoned in Russia: Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovitch and Radio Free Europe’s Ars Kurmasheva.
The opening of the door to Karlsson comes after two decades of the Kremlin’s crackdown on press freedom, in which a prominent Russian journalist was murdered and many more were forced to live abroad under Putin. There is also demolition.
However, the Kremlin denied Carlson’s own claims that he was the only Western journalist who had “taken the trouble” to request a meeting with Putin since the invasion.
Asked whether Karlsson was the only one who had requested a meeting with Putin, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters: “We have received many requests to meet with the president.”
He said Carlson’s more pro-Russian stance contrasted with what he called “traditional Anglo-Saxon media.”
CNN anchor Christiane Amanpour and BBC Moscow correspondent Steve Rosenberg were among those who disputed Carlson’s claim that he was the only one to request an interview with Putin.
Mr. Carlson’s surprising scoop comes as U.S. aid to Ukraine has dried up due to Republican opposition in Washington and the Ukrainian military is scrambling to procure ammunition.
As new Russian airstrikes kill five more people in Kiev and elsewhere, the White House’s Kirby said Ukrainian battlefield commanders are facing “very tough decisions” about how to conserve ammunition. Ta.
“The Russians know this, which is why they continue to fly drones and missiles to force the Ukrainians to use air defense capabilities that they know are not being replaced right now,” Kirby said. he said.
President Putin has long been respected by far-right figures in the United States, including President Trump, who has a history of praising Kremlin leaders, calling them “geniuses” and more trustworthy than U.S. intelligence agencies.
DK/SMS