Kremlin confirms Tucker Carlson interview took place Tuesday
The Kremlin confirmed Wednesday that U.S. journalist Tucker Carlson conducted an interview with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“Yes, I can confirm this,” the Kremlin’s Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov said Wednesday. “As soon as it [the interview] is prepared, it will be released,” he told reporters, according to TASS news agency.
“He has a position that differs from the others. It is in no way pro-Russian, it is not pro-Ukrainian, it is rather pro-American,” Peskov added.
“But at least it is contrastingly different from the position of traditional Anglo-Saxon media,” he added.
In this pool photograph distributed by Russian state owned agency Sputnik, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov attends a meeting of Russia’s President Vladimir Putin and Chad’s Transitional President Brice Mahamat Idriss Deby (both not pictured) at the Kremlin in Moscow on January 24, 2024.
Mikhail Metzel | AFP | Getty Images
The comments echo those made by Carlson in Moscow on Tuesday. Announcing his interview with Putin, Carlson said “we are not here because we love Vladimir Putin. We are here because we love the United States.”
Carlson lambasted Western media as he laid out his reasons for interviewing Putin, saying they “lie” to their readers and views and do so “mostly by omission.” Carlson also said he was defending freedom of speech. He also claimed that no one had “bothered” to interview the Russian president.
A man makes a selfie photo in front of the Kremlin’s Spasskaya tower and St. Basil’s cathedral in downtown Moscow on September 11, 2023. Russia’s Elections Commission said that the pro-Kremlin United Russia part had won local elections in four regions of Ukraine occupied by Russian forces, in a vote dismissed by Kyiv. (Photo by Alexander NEMENOV / AFP) (Photo by ALEXANDER NEMENOV/AFP via Getty Images)
Alexander Nemenov | Afp | Getty Images
Peskov said Wednesday that “Mister Carlson is wrong” about the Kremlin not receiving interview requests from foreign media but said he couldn’t be expected to know that.
The Kremlin receives “lot of requests for interviews with the president,” Peskov said, “but, basically, when it comes to the countries of the collective West, we are talking about large online media, traditional television channels, large newspapers, which cannot boast of attempts to at least look impartial in terms of coverage. These are all media that take an exclusively one-sided position,” he said.
“Of course, there is no desire to communicate with such media, and there is hardly any point in this, it is unlikely that there can be any benefit from this,” he added.
Russia’s media landscape is tightly-controlled by the Kremlin and is consistently careful to orchestrate favorable coverage (and to omit any criticism) of Russia’s leadership. It’s also rare for Western media outlets to be granted an audience with Putin and many foreign journalists have been expelled from Russia.
Aside from the repression of media freedoms, freedom of speech is frequently under attack in Russia and censorship has only increased since the war started almost two years ago; expressions of anti-war sentiment can lead to arrest in Russia, with legislation making any perceived “disinformation” about Russia’s armed forces a criminal offence.
— Holly Ellyatt
