Vladimir Putin rants about Ukraine in Tucker Carlson interview: Live

Vladimir Putin said the world was changing faster than during the collapse of the Roman Empire, mentioning advances in genetic research and artificial intelligence. He said geneticists could create a “superman” and quipped that Elon Musk had put a chip in a human brain.

But he said that humanity needed to think about what to do about the advances in genetics and artificial intelligence and suggested the nuclear arms control treaties of the Cold War could be a guide.

“When there arises an understanding that the boundless and uncontrolled development of artificial intelligence or genetics or some other modern trends, cannot be stopped, that these researches will still exist just as it was impossible to hide gunpowder from humanity… when humanity feels a threat to itself, to humanity as a whole, then, it seems to me, there will come a period to negotiate at the inter-state level on how we will regulate this,” Mr Putin said.

Several journalists, including from Russia, have also called out Tucker Carlson for patting himself on the back for landing an interview with Vladimir Putin.

“Unbelievable! I am like hundreds of Russian journalists who have had to go into exile to keep reporting about the Kremlin’s war against Ukraine,” Russian journalist Yevgenia Albats wrote. “The alternative was to go to jail. And now this SoB is teaching us about good journalism, shooting from the $1,000 Ritz suite in Moscow.”

“He says he’s interviewing Putin because freedom of speech is Americans’ birthright,” wrote BBC Eastern Europe Correspondent Sarah Rainsford, who was chucked out of Russia in 2021 after being declared a threat to national security. “I guess he knows that Putin made it a crime to tell the truth about Russia’s war on Ukraine? That independent Russian journalists have fled to avoid prison?”

Several journalists took to social media to mock Tucker Carlson for claiming that “most Americans have no idea why Putin invaded Ukraine or what his goals are now”.

“They’ve never heard his voice. That’s wrong,” he said.

Journalists were quick to point out that his 24 February invasion speech from 2022 was widely covered by major media outlets.“Poor, poor Vladimir Putin,” mocked the Wall Street Journal’s chief foreign-affairs correspondent Yaroslav Trofimov, wrote on X.

“Until now, nobody in the West has had the chance to hear him explain all the excellent reasons for why he had to invade Ukraine.”

“Not in the speech that was broadcast live on every global network the morning of the invasion, and not in countless others,” Trofimov added.

Americal- Polish journalist, Anne Applebaum took to social media to lash out at Tucker Carlson for his interview with Vladimir Putin.

“Many journalists have interviewed Putin, who also makes frequent, widely covered speeches. Carlson’s interview is different because he is not a journalist, he’s a propagandist, with a history of helping autocrats conceal corruption,” she wrote on X.

“BBC tried repeatedly to interview Putin. I wonder why he says no to them, yes to Carlson?

Carlson before the interview, falsely claimed “not a single Western journalist has bothered to interview” Mr Putin since 2022.

Countless reporters from Western countries, including the BBC’s Russia Editor Steve Rosenberg, have sent the Kremlin repeated interview requests, wrote the British broadcaster in an article.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov acknowledged this and told the BBC: “Mr Carlson is not correct, and he couldn’t have known that. We receive a lot of requests for interviews with the president.”

Russian president Vladimir Putin could not remember the last time he spoke with his US counterpart Joe Biden while claiming he had a “personal relationship” with his predecessor Donald Trump.

“I cannot remember when I talked to him,” he said of Biden, adding that the two last spoke before the February 2022 invasion of Ukraine. “But why should I remember everything? I have a lot of my own things to do. We have domestic political affairs.”

Putin claimed that the West is more “afraid of a strong China … than it fears a strong Russia because Russia has 150 million people and China has 1.5 billion population and its economy is growing by leaps and bounds or 5 per cent a year. It used to be even more but that’s enough for China”.

“China’s potential is enormous. It is the biggest economy in the world today in terms of purchasing power parity and the size of the economy. It has already overtaken the United States quite a long time ago, and it is growing at a rapid clip,” Putin said.

Late last month, Bloomberg reported: “The US has pulled further ahead of China in the race for world’s biggest economy, thanks in part to a vibrant American consumer. US gross domestic product rose 6.3% in nominal terms — that is, unadjusted for inflation — last year, outpacing China’s 4.6% gain.”

“Let’s not talk about who is afraid of whom … let’s get into the fact that after 1991 when Russia expected that it would be welcomed into the brotherly family of civilized nations nothing like this happened … the promise was that NATO would not expand eastward, but it happened five times. There were five waves of expansion. We tolerated it, we were trying to persuade them we were saying, ‘Please don’t we are as bourgeois now as you are. We are a market economy and there’s no Communist Party power, let’s negotiate.”

Russian president Vladimir Putin said that Russia will fight for its interests “to the end” but has no interest in expanding its war in Ukraine to other countries such as Poland and Latvia.

He said Western leaders had come to realise it was impossible inflict a strategic defeat on Russia and were wondering what to do next.

“We are ready for this dialogue,” he said.

The Russian leader said the US had pressing domestic issues to worry about. “Wouldn’t it be better to negotiate with Russia? Make an agreement. Already understanding the situation that is developing today, realizing that Russia will fight for its interests to the end,” he said.

Washington, which has sent Ukraine more than $110bn in aid since Russia invaded in February 2022, has made clear it has no interest in talking on Mr Putin’s terms.

Vladimir Putin took his chance to lay out his distorted version of history, claiming that Ukraine is not a real country.

“After World War II, Ukraine received in addition to the lands that had belonged to Poland before the war, both of the lands that had previously belonged to Hungary and Romania – so Romania and Hungary had some of their lands taken away and given to the Soviet Ukraine, and they still remain part of Ukraine,” he claimed.

“So in this sense, we have every reason to affirm that Ukraine is an artificial state that was shaped at Stalin’s will,” Mr Putin argued.

Exiled Russian businessman and opposition leader Mikhail Khodorkovsky, a former oligarch who lives in London following his 2003 jailing in Russia after falling out with Vladimir Putin, noted on X that Tucker Carlson is part of the Kremlin’s effort to get Western approval.

“It needs Western approval. This is why, for example, Russian propagandists have taken to writing pro-Putin comments under articles on Western news sites under assumed European and American names, then reprinting them as ‘Western opinions’,” he wrote. “This is where Tucker Carlson comes in. He’s been complimentary of Putin for years, even as the dictator became persona non grata among the broader Western public. So when he visited Moscow, he got the superstar treatment.”

“His visit has received more media coverage than any visiting world leader or celebrity in years. His every move was portrayed as a matter of national importance – all because he satisfies the regime’s need for approval from the West,” the dissident wrote regarding Carlson’s Moscow trip.

Introducing his interview with Putin, Carlson said that at the beginning, “we asked the most obvious question, which is why did you do this – because you feel a threat, an imminent physical threat. And that’s your justification – And the answer we got shocked us”.

“Putin went on for a very long time, probably half an hour about the history of Russia going back to the eighth century. And honestly, we thought this was a filibustering technique and found it annoying and interrupted him several times and he responded he was annoyed by the interruption,” Carlson added.

“But we concluded in the end for what it’s worth, that it was not a filibustering technique, there was no time limit on the interview, we ended it after more than two hours. Instead, what you’re about to see seem to us sincere whether you agree with it or not. Vladimir Putin believes that Russia has a historic claim to parts of western Ukraine,” he said.

“So our opinion would be to view it in that light as a sincere expression of what he thinks,” Carlson added.