Vladimir Putin said in a nearly two-hour interview with Tucker Carlson that Russia does not intend to expand its war against Ukraine into Poland and Latvia. Additionally, he made some unsubstantiated claims regarding how it is proceeding.
Tune into Tucker Carlson’s interview with Vladimir Putin for more details, or read the transcript.
Putin discussed Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and the Western response, the situation facing civilians besieged in Mariupol and how Russia is fighting a “war for survival” to protect itself against an aggressive United States in his February 9 interview.
As an expert Kremlin propagandist and strategist, Putin understands that many Westerners don’t trust his version of events. Therefore, for years he has created an image of an imperial Russian state under threat by outside forces in order to justify current tensions with the West.
As a young law student in the 1980s, Vladimir Putin joined the KGB, Soviet Russia’s equivalent of CIA. While in Dresden at the collapse of Berlin Wall he used a risky bluff to keep protestors away from storming local KGB headquarters; since then he has described its collapse as an irreversible geopolitical catastrophe which only he, and Russia, can stop from occurring.
Vladimir Putin may present an alarming picture, yet his claim that Russia does not seek wider war is unsustainable. Indeed, Kataryna Wolczuk of Chatham House’s Russia and Eurasia program points out that Ukraine’s war has catalysed actions that were previously considered unlikely; such as EU nations increasing defense spending by increasing spending on defence equipment or by sending more troops across Europe to protect their borders from Russia aggression.
NATO’s response to Russian aggression has been remarkable, with largely united support despite some dissension over whether to increase sanctions on Russia or provide weapons for Ukraine.
Finally, the conflict in Ukraine has led to credible accusations from international rights groups of war crimes committed by Russian armed forces in Ukraine and has resulted in an arrest warrant being issued against Putin by the International Criminal Court for his alleged role in this conflict.
Carlson asked Putin for responses to these allegations and accusations of his regime’s oppressive policies, such as their imprisonment of its critics such as Aleksei Navalny who has been barred from running for president and is being held on what the U.S. government refers to as false charges.
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