Putin: Ukrainian coup put country on collision course with Russia years before invasion

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A Ukrainian “coup” in 2015 that ousted the country’s pro-Moscow president put Russian and Ukraine on the path to war, Russian President Vladimir Putin said in a much-touted interview with conservative pundit Tucker Carlson released Thursday.

The Russian president in the two-hour interview also said peace talks with Ukraine early in the conflict had been “almost finalized” in 2022 before the U.S. and its European allies blocked further progress.

The unedited talk gave Mr. Putin a rare, uninterrupted platform to describe the world from the Kremlin’s point of view. He, at times, took full advantage of the opportunity.

Peace negotiations were “almost finalized after we withdrew our troops from Kyiv, but then the other side threw away all the agreement and obeyed the instructions of European countries and the U.S. to fight to the bitter end,” Mr. Putin said.

Mr. Putin said relations with the U.S. are unlikely to improve until Washington learns to accept its changed role in the world and pulls back from a policy of sanctions and military action abroad. He acknowledged he had good personal relations with former Presidents George W. Bush and Donald Trump, but said larger forces are in play.

“It’s not about the leader or the leader’s personality,” he said, “but about the [American] elite’s mindset.”

On another issue, Mr. Putin offered little reason for optimism that jailed Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich would be leaving his Russian jail cell soon.

Russia, Mr. Putin said, “has made so many gestures of good will that we have run out of them” in the negotiations over Americans held in Russian jails.

Asked early on by Mr. Carlson about the reasons behind Russia’s decision to invade its neighbor in February 2022, Mr. Putin gave a lengthy historical disquisition, focusing in particular on the ouster of pro-Russian Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych in 2015 in a popular uprising, setting in motion the series of events that led to current President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s election in 2019.

Mr. Putin rebuffed Mr. Carlson’s suggestion that he acted partly out of a fear of an attack from the United States.

“It’s not that America, the United States, was going to launch a surprise strike on Russia,” Mr. Putin said through a translator. “I didn’t say that. Are we having a talk show or a serious conversation?”

The interview was controversial before the first question was even asked.

Mr. Carlson, who worked at CNN and MSNBC before finding fame and political clout as a longtime commentator for Fox News, said at one point he was the first American journalist to seek an interview with the Russian leader since the Ukraine war began, a claim contested by other news outlets.

Mr. Putin has not been completely isolated, appearing at public events inside Russia and even giving his traditional marathon year-end press conference in December in which he answered a string of questions on his foreign and domestic policy.

But the Russian president, facing an international war crimes warrant for the conduct of Russian troops in Ukraine, has traveled rarely since the invasion and has not sat for interviews with Western reporters.

Mr. Carlson in a social media post this week said Western reporters ignored Mr. Putin’s viewpoint while devoting massive coverage to Mr. Zelenskyy.

“Not a single Western journalist has bothered to interview the president of the other country involved in this conflict, Vladimir Putin,” Mr. Carlson said.

Several news outlets criticized Mr. Carlson’s contention that they were not interested in sitting down to talk with Mr. Putin or to hear his side of the story. BBC Russia Editor Steve Rosenberg said in a social media post, for example, that the BBC has “lodged several requests with the Kremlin [for an interview] in the last 18 months. Always a ‘no’ for us.”

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov stoked the controversy while acknowledging other media outlets had asked for time with Mr. Putin. Moscow agreed to Mr. Carlson’s request, Mr. Peskov said, because his position was different.

“It’s not pro-Russian, not pro-Ukrainian, it’s pro-American. It starkly contrasts with the stance of traditional Anglo-Saxon media,” Mr. Peskov said.

The interview, conducted earlier in the week, was aired on the same day that Russian election officials struck yet another rival from the list of candidates who will be allowed to challenge Mr. Putin in Russia’s presidential elections next month. 

Veteran politician Boris Nadezhdin, who was running on a platform opposing the war in Ukraine, was disqualified from the ballot over alleged errors in his endorsement signatures. Russia’s Central Election Commission denied Mr. Nadezhdin’s request for more time to investigate the questioned signatures or to line up new supporters.

“Tens of millions want to vote for me, and you’re telling me about 11 ’dead souls,’” Mr. Nadezhdin told election officials Thursday, according to The Moscow Times.

Mr. Putin is expected to easily win another six-year term in power, with just three fringe candidates currently registered to run against him.