Controversy Swirls As Right-Wing U.S. Commentator Tucker Carlson To Publish Putin Interview

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Right-wing U.S. political commentator Tucker Carlson, who is known in part for lauding authoritarian leaders and has questioned U.S. support for Ukraine in its fight against invading Russian troops, said he will publish an interview with Russian President Vladimir Putin late on February 8.

Carlson, a former Fox News TV host who has made a name for himself with his often extremist views, said in a post on X, formerly Twitter, that the interview will be posted online at 6 p.m. in New York on his streaming network.

Russia-focused political analysts and Kremlin critics said they believed that Putin would use his first interview with a Western media figure since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine to advance his narratives ahead of presidential elections this year in Russia and the United States, whose military support for Kyiv is crucial to its defense but is in question as Republican lawmakers block a $6 billion aid package proposed by President Joe Biden.

Describing his decision to interview Putin in an announcement posted on X on February 6, Carlson asserted that U.S. media outlets focus fawningly on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy but that Putin’s voice is not heard in the United States because Western journalists have not “bothered” to interview him since the full-scale invasion.

Numerous Western journalists rejected this claim, saying that they have consistently sought to interview Putin but have been turned away. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov later confirmed that, saying that his office receives “numerous requests for interviews with the president” but that most of the Western outlets asking are “traditional TV channels and large newspapers that don’t even attempt to appear impartial in their coverage. Of course there’s no desire to communicate with this kind of media.”

Carlson also faced criticism for interviewing Putin when his government is holding two U.S. journalists — Alsu Kurmasheva of RFE/RL and Evan Gershkovich of The Wall Street Journal — in jail on charges related to their reporting that both vehemently deny.

Some estimates say around 1,000 independent Russia journalists have been forced to flee the country fearing for their safety due to strict censorship laws Putin has put in place that make critical coverage of the war against Ukraine a criminal offense.

“Two American journalists are currently in Russian jails for trying to conduct independent journalism in Russia. Russian journalists have been killed for trying to practice independent journalism, some are in jail, and many others have had to flee the country,” said Brian Taylor, a professor of political science at Syracuse University’s Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs in the United States.

“Many Western journalists who work on and in Russia have sought an interview with Putin since his full-scale invasion of Ukraine two years ago, to no avail,” Taylor said in e-mailed remarks. “The fact that Putin is willing to talk to Tucker Carlson now means that Putin is looking for an opportunity to influence American domestic politics and he thinks Carlson will be a useful conduit for his message.”

In his February 6 announcement, Carlson portrayed the interview as a chance to hear the Russian side, stating that “most Americans are not informed” about a war that he said is “reshaping the world.”

Carlson has gained a reputation for defending the Russian leader, once claiming that “hating Putin has become the central purpose of America’s foreign policy.”

His credentials as an independent journalist have been widely questioned.

Carlson’s former employer, Fox News, successfully won a 2020 defamation case against him, with the judge saying in her verdict that when presenting stories, Carlson is not “stating actual facts” about the topics he discusses and is instead engaging in “exaggeration” and “‘non-literal commentary.”

Carlson was one of Fox News’ top-rated hosts before he abruptly left the network last year after Fox settled a separate defamation lawsuit over its reporting of the 2020 presidential election. Fox agreed to pay $787 million to voting machine company Dominion after the company filed a lawsuit alleging the network spread false claims that its machines were rigged against former President Donald Trump.

Carlson has had a rocky relationship at times with the former president, but during Trump’s presidency he had Carlson’s full backing and in November Carlson endorsed Trump in his 2024 run to regain the White House.

Carlson’s interview with Putin took place on February 6, according to Peskov. He spent several days in Russia in a visit that was avidly covered by media outlets there, many of which are state-run or loyal to the state.

Putin has increasingly portrayed the unprovoked invasion of Ukraine as a purely defensive battle to save Russia and, as he put it in a speech last November, to fight “for the freedom of the whole world” from “the dictatorship of a single hegemon” — clearly a reference to the United States. Russian officials, lawmakers, and state-aligned media often praise Western critics of the United States and the Biden administration.

Analysts say that while Russian forces have failed to subjugate Ukraine or force Zelenskiy’s government from power, Putin hopes that Western support for Kyiv and morale among Ukrainians will flag to the point where his war aims are achievable – and that the U.S. presidential election in November will advance that process.

Tatyana Stanovaya, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center think tank, said that Putin likely decided to do the interview because he sees this year as “pivotal” in shifting the dynamics of the war in Ukraine toward his favor given the United States is in an election year and Ukraine appears to be “grappling with significant internal political challenges.”

“Against this strategic backdrop, Putin badly needs to reach a Western audience. It is probable that during the interview, he will attempt to position himself as a friend to the American people, arguing that it is in the U.S.’s interest to cease its support for Ukraine,” she wrote on X, adding that “the interview is a platform for Putin to widen his access to American viewers and garner support for his narrative.”