The interview conducted by the ultraconservative American journalist Tucker Carlson with the president of Russia, Vladimir Putin, the first he gave to a Western media since the start of the war in Ukraine two years ago, will be broadcast this Thursday, as announced on his Instagram account .
In a video posted this week on the networks, the controversial journalist, who was fired from the Fox news network in 2023 and today has his own channel on X (Tucker Carlson Network), urged Americans to watch the interview to decide. as “citizens” and not as “slaves” what they think about Putin.
The interview will be broadcast at 5 p.m. Mexico time on Carlson’s channel, who is a friend and follower of former President Donald Trump, who aspires to be the Republican presidential candidate in the November elections of this year in the midst of a tangle of processes. judicial proceedings against him.
The Kremlin confirmed on Wednesday that the Russian president had granted the interview to Carlson, who has already announced that he will broadcast it in a single block and without censorship.
At the same time, he denied that Carlson has a “pro-Russian” position and assured that Putin agreed to speak with him because his position is far from that of other Anglo-Saxon journalists.
“It has a position that differs from the rest. It is neither pro-Russian nor pro-Ukrainian, but rather pro-American, but at least it contrasts with the position of the traditional Anglo-Saxon media,” said the spokesman for the Russian Presidency, Dmitri Peskov.
The White House said Putin should have no other spokesman to justify his war in Ukraine.
“It should be very obvious to everyone what Mr. Putin has done in Ukraine, and the completely false and ridiculous reasons why he tried to justify it,” National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters aboard the Air Force One.
“I don’t think we need another interview with Vladimir Putin to understand his brutality.”
The journalist had already expressed in the past his desire to interview the head of the Kremlin, who last spoke with a Western journalist in October 2021, so he traveled to Moscow to do so.
Carlson’s access to Putin stands in stark contrast to the restrictions placed on other foreign journalists in Russia, where two American citizens are currently imprisoned: Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich and Radio Free Europe’s Alsou Kurmasheva.
The interview with Putin comes at a time when the approval of a millionaire military aid package to Ukraine decided by the administration of Democratic President Joe Biden is hanging in the balance in the US Congress and the war in Ukraine is close to turning two years (February 24) without any signs of near peace.