Tucker Carlson’s anticipated interview with Russian President Vladimir Putin racked up serious views on Thursday evening in the wake of its release on X, and by Friday morning, it had already accumulated 125 million views and counting.
The interview has been chaotically controversial in the mainstream media, but most Americans have seemed eager to get a glimpse of Putin’s perspective on the ongoing Ukraine-Russia war, which has drained billions of dollars out of the United States.
The interview was two hours long and took place at the Kremlin, Tucker noted at the beginning of the clip. For the first hour, President Putin spoke almost exclusively about the history of Russia and Ukraine, laying the groundwork for why he believed that his country had a right to take back what he believes is their territory.
Putin also derided the corruption of the United States’ mainstream media and the Central Intelligence Agency. The Russian president calmly but pointedly blamed the CIA for blowing up the Nord Stream Pipeline and stated that the conflict with Ukraine in 2014 was instigated by America’s intelligence community by supporting what he called a “coup.”
Putin further said that Russia addressed the United States and European Union multiple times and asked them to remain true to the Minsk Agreements, which were signed in 2014 and 2015 as part of a ceasefire negotiation after Russian separatists and Ukrainians bloodily clashed.
He said that nobody wanted peace, and that “everybody wanted to resolve the conflict by military force only.”
“It was THEY who started the war in 2014,” he continued, seemingly referring to the CIA. “…This is an attempt to stop it.”
Putin also explained, “In a war of propaganda, it is very hard to defeat the United States because the United States controls all the world’s media and many European media. The ultimate beneficiary of the European media are American financial institutions – don’t you know that?”
He added, “So, it is possible to get involved in this war, but it is cost-prohibitive at this point. We can simply shine the sources of information, and we will not achieve results.”
