On February 8, US TV anchor Tucker Carlson launched a two-hour interview with Russian President Vladimir Putin. This was the Russian chief’s first encounter with a Western journalist for the reason that begin of the Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
The interview was met with quite a lot of mockery within the West, largely centered on the primary half, wherein Putin instructed that he would speak about Russo-Ukrainian historical past for 30 seconds after which went on bragging about medieval princes and long-extinct empires for a very good half-hour.
A few of his claims had been outright stunning, akin to his suggestion that Poland precipitated World Conflict II by failing to accommodate Hitler’s calls for. Others mirrored a view of historical past related to Russian nationalist mythology, which is hardly worse than Ukraine’s nationalist mythology – the one which Western supporters of Ukraine are inclined to cross because the nation’s reliable historical past.
Whereas the interview offered quite a lot of fodder for Western ridicule, it additionally contained some vital messaging that Western observers ignored amid their persistent rejection of the very doubtless prospect that Putin will finish the conflict in Ukraine on his personal phrases.
All through his dialog with Carlson, the Russian chief appeared to channel the sentiment of being continuously duped by the West and exhibit a agency resolve to not be duped ever once more.
The Russian president spoke of Ukraine’s invitation to affix NATO, issued on the Bucharest summit in 2008. Germany and France had been recognized to be towards it on the time and solely a small minority of Ukrainians supported the thought. In line with Putin, US President George W Bush pushed by the choice which triggered a series of occasions in the end resulting in the battle in Ukraine.
He advised Carlson that on the time he was being repeatedly assured by his German and French counterparts that Ukraine wasn’t actually going to affix NATO, however he had no cause to imagine these assurances. If the US was in a position to press them into agreeing to the invitation for Ukraine, there was no assure it wouldn’t do it once more to get the nation into NATO, he stated.
Later within the interview, Putin introduced up the February 2014 settlement between the Ukrainian authorities and the opposition. Mediated by France, Germany and Poland, it was supposed to finish the violence on the most dramatic level of the Maidan revolution in Kyiv. Putin stated that as an alternative of complying with it, the opposition proceeded with overthrowing Viktor Yanukovych’s authorities, whereupon – he maintained – the Western guarantors threw the settlement “into the furnace”.
In the direction of the tip of his historical past lecture, he introduced up the Istanbul talks in March 2022, which may have ended the present conflict in Ukraine. He claimed that he eliminated the troops from the environment of Kyiv on the insistence of Western leaders with a purpose to facilitate the talks, whereupon the Ukrainians ditched the agreements on the behest of the West – specifically British Prime Minister Boris Johnson.
The declare that the withdrawal was intentional is hardly believable for the reason that Russian forces in northern Ukraine had been extraordinarily stretched and struggling heavy losses from the Ukrainian military’s guerrilla ways. They doubtless would have needed to be pulled again anyway. However the sentiment of being duped was as soon as once more very a lot there and it ought to inform us about his additional actions.
Putin seems to see the historical past of his relationship with Western and Ukrainian leaders as a succession of insults and betrayals, to which he has responded in his trademark heavy-handed method: Not an eye fixed for eye, however a punishment that grows exponentially every time the opponent reveals perceived intransigence. But his coverage, at the least from his personal viewpoint, has at all times been reactive, not proactive.
Whether or not it was in good or unhealthy religion, the message he was making an attempt to convey within the interview is that at every essential level in historical past, Ukraine had a alternative of sparing itself all of the additional bother and that it nonetheless has this alternative now. He’s prepared for talks. Just a few instances within the interview, he ridiculed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy for banning himself from speaking to Putin by a presidential decree. He urged his Ukrainian counterpart to cancel that call.
Putin’s endgame seems to be getting an settlement alongside the traces of what has been tentatively achieved in Istanbul, however this time with all of the territories which Russia occupied and formally annexed after these talks fell by. The implied menace is that Ukraine will lose much more territory – to not point out lives and infrastructure – ought to it preserve being cussed.
What Putin is making an attempt to attain is making the West face its ethical dilemma which boils right down to the price and good thing about resisting his aggression. The continued help for Ukraine’s navy effort will value hundreds of lives and devastate Ukraine even additional, whereas success is hardly assured.
The stakes don’t appear to be in Kyiv’s favour as issues stand now: Russian troops are advancing all alongside the entrance line and the US navy support to Ukraine is in jeopardy as a result of resistance from the Republicans.
However getting again to the Istanbul framework means a transparent defeat for each Ukraine and the West, regardless of how onerous all of the spin medical doctors and troll farms will attempt to body it as a victory.
Greater than anybody else, will probably be the Ukrainians who will probably be asking what was all this monumental sacrifice for when it was attainable to signal a deal in Istanbul again in March 2022 or to implement the Minsk agreements, which Zelenskyy publicly dismissed as “vapid” days earlier than Putin ordered his troops to march on Ukraine.
If the scenario doesn’t miraculously change, for the time being Ukraine appears to be like very removed from getting any semblance of what was envisaged in Minsk or Istanbul and it’s drifting additional in the direction of distress. The mockery of Putin’s interview will, in fact, proceed in a airtight echo chamber that has lengthy parted methods with actuality.
The views expressed on this article are the creator’s personal and don’t essentially mirror Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
