TRIGGERnometry - Putin Vs. Tucker： Konstantin Kisin Reaction

00:00:00.000 Hello and welcome to a very special episode of Trigonometry, where I'll be talking to

00:00:05.520 Konstantin all about Tucker Carlson's interview with Vladimir Putin. If you want to ask Konstantin

00:00:11.360 any questions, send us through a super chat and we'll be answering them in the second half of

00:00:16.300 the episode. Welcome, mate. Good to be here. Thanks for having me. Yeah. Just before we get

00:00:23.240 into the main body of the interview, the one thing that I found very interesting was actually

00:00:27.640 the response on social media to the whole interviews. It was quite interesting, wasn't it?

00:00:33.540 Well, social media and the media. Yeah. And I have to say, I think if whoever you're listening

00:00:39.500 to or reading or following on Twitter, Instagram, whatever, anyone who had an opinion on this

00:00:45.640 before they saw the interview or before the interview was out, you should stop listening

00:00:49.460 to it because these are people who are prepared to have an opinion on things they haven't seen.

00:00:53.440 But we laugh, but it's actually quite a legitimate point because we live in this world where

00:00:59.240 there's like this really crazy, perverse incentive structure for people to comment on things before

00:01:04.860 they've even been released. And I just think it's so discrediting if you do that. So obviously

00:01:10.140 everyone has their own preconception about Putin, the war or whatever, but and Tucker. And I certainly

00:01:17.560 do on all those things. I've been on his show a couple of times. I very much disagree with the

00:01:21.520 positions he's taken on Russia and Ukraine, etc. But you have to listen to the thing before you

00:01:27.020 comment on the thing. That's kind of basic, isn't it? It was about five years ago, mate. Not anymore,

00:01:33.600 really, sadly. Well, that's kind of it. So I guess what people, the big debate was, is it good journalism

00:01:41.300 or not? And that's the one thing you really cannot assess until you've watched the interview because

00:01:45.940 you can dislike Tucker and think he's not a great journalist, but he might have done a great

00:01:50.640 piece of journalism. Or you can really like Tucker and then, you know, he might not have done a

00:01:56.640 great piece. You have to actually see the thing. So the question is, having watched it, number one,

00:02:01.980 was it a good piece of journalism? And I actually don't know the answer to that because it really

00:02:07.160 depends on what you mean, right? We watched it. It's a two hour and 20 minute interview. The first

00:02:13.020 two hours plus, he asked a question and let's put an answer. And that's all that really happens.

00:02:18.680 He tries to interject once or twice. Putin kind of steamrolls over it. I'm sure we'll talk about it.

00:02:24.400 Yeah. And then at the end, when he asked about the American journalist who Putin thinks is a spy,

00:02:31.280 then there's a little bit of back and forth. And actually, they get into a bit of a more like answer

00:02:37.480 pushback type of situation, which doesn't really go very far. So is that good journalism? Is it good

00:02:43.120 journalism to let Putin talk for two hours without interruption? I actually kind of think it is

00:02:48.520 because one of the things, as you know, I've been doing is translating Putin's speeches, not because

00:02:52.680 I agree with Putin, but I think it's really important for people in the West to hear his point

00:02:57.940 of view, not because it's necessarily a legitimate point of view, but I actually do agree with Tucker

00:03:04.460 that most of it, not all of it, but most of it Putin believes sincerely. So whether he's right or

00:03:10.120 wrong or whether what he's saying is true or not, you do need to know what your adversaries

00:03:14.160 are thinking, right? So from my perspective, I have no problem with the way Tucker conducted the

00:03:20.520 interview. Would I have liked to see him challenge more? Yes. Would I have liked to see him be better

00:03:26.160 prepared? Yes. Would I have liked the interview to be five hours instead of two so that could happen?

00:03:31.700 Yes. Are any of those things possible? Well, I don't know, right? So, but certainly the idea that

00:03:36.880 Putin went up there to like big him up, didn't come across that way to me. However, obviously not

00:03:43.320 everybody sat there and watched the full two hour and 20 minute interview. Some people just liked,

00:03:48.400 you know, hearing Putin look presidential and, you know, look more, less demented than Joe Biden

00:03:54.260 and whatever. That seemed to be like the rightoid talking point, you know, look how great he looks,

00:03:59.760 which very superficial way to look at it, I think. And the left wing talking point was, you know,

00:04:04.660 Tucker is just giving him a platform as if Putin needed a platform, you know. So he was kind of

00:04:11.020 two very stupid sides arguing and making very stupid points, in my opinion. One thing I think

00:04:15.580 that can't be disputed, actually, and again, there's a human element where I look at Tucker and it's

00:04:20.520 very easy to go, oh, he should have done it. He should have done that. He should have done this.

00:04:23.320 He should have done that. When the guy is in the Kremlin and opposite one of the most powerful men in

00:04:28.980 the world, Vladimir Putin, in his country, literally in his capital. Where people do

00:04:34.700 regularly fall out of windows, come down with strange diseases. Exactly. Exactly. But having

00:04:41.720 said all that, Vladimir Putin was in control right the way through. And he did something

00:04:48.240 very interesting where he's saying, well, is this going to be a chat show? Is this going to

00:04:51.480 be something more serious? Yeah. Which I thought was a very interesting ploy. What did you think

00:04:55.280 about that? Well, I think what he was doing is he was essentially saying to Tucker, like,

00:04:58.900 let me talk and let me lay out my serious points. Yeah. This isn't a talk show where you get to

00:05:03.600 interject every three seconds and whatever. And you're completely right. He was in control.

00:05:09.120 By the way, a lot of people who may be watching him for the first time or reading a speech of his

00:05:13.800 for the first time are like, oh my God, I can't believe he talked about the history of Russia for

00:05:17.820 40 minutes, which I'm sure we'll get to. Actually, every speech he does now is like a three-hour

00:05:22.280 speech. And the first hour is about the history of Russia. He's quite used at this point, having

00:05:28.500 been in power for 25 years now, you know, to being listened to, to hold in court. Yeah. And this is,

00:05:35.000 you know, people will say this is my anti-Putin bias, but it's just the fact when you've been in power

00:05:39.760 for 25 years, your power is undisputed and unchallenged. You start to feel like you can,

00:05:45.280 you know, take your time to explain things that people need to hear. And we saw this with

00:05:50.460 Fidel Castro, you know, giving 12-hour speeches. Yeah. This is quite normal for people who've

00:05:55.000 been in power for a long time. It just is. And by the way, even in a democratic country, I mean,

00:05:59.880 you know, Thatcher used to go on quite a bit. People would kind of say that. Do you know what

00:06:03.720 I mean? People who are in those positions for a very long time are used to going on at length

00:06:09.040 about their opinions. And so that's kind of what you saw playing out. Yeah, indeed. And Tucker was,

00:06:16.680 you could see he was quite surprised, actually. And he said in his, you know, opening address to

00:06:21.640 Kamri, he thought it was filibustering on Putin's behalf, but it wasn't. So let's get into the history

00:06:27.260 of Russia. What did you actually think about his description of the history of Russia? Was it

00:06:32.500 accurate? Yeah, it was. So broadly speaking, what he's saying about the history of Russia is entirely

00:06:37.660 correct. And what I found very interesting is how many people were saying that, oh, he was just

00:06:42.360 saying all this irrelevant stuff. And it's only irrelevant if you don't understand the point he's

00:06:47.780 actually trying to make, which is very, very obvious. He spends half an hour basically making

00:06:52.820 the case for the fact that Ukraine is not a legitimate country. It has no right to exist.

00:06:58.940 And most of it is Russian land populated by Russian people. And it belongs to Russia. Now,

00:07:05.880 what's interesting is Tucker actually does challenge him and says, well, you know, why? Why have you not

00:07:11.300 said that for the first 22 years of your being in power? And Putin never answers, interestingly

00:07:17.100 enough, which is telling. And the point Chuck is making to him is you never justified your invasion

00:07:23.580 of Ukraine in 2022 in these terms. And yet, as Putin has done in every big speech he has done,

00:07:31.540 he keeps talking about this point that these are our lands populated by Russian people, Russian speakers,

00:07:37.720 without ever saying the thing that he actually is saying, which is basically it's my land. I'm entitled

00:07:43.920 to it. Yeah. And what's interesting as well is that he even talks about the word Ukraine and says like

00:07:51.260 it has no meaning in the sense of a country, which I found very interesting.

00:07:55.360 Look, the fact is, historically, the points he's making are not incorrect in that Ukraine didn't

00:08:02.240 really exist as a country prior to being formed during the Soviet period. Even during the Soviet

00:08:08.380 period, it was given lands, both from the Russian part and from what was Hungary and Romania. And it was

00:08:15.740 kind of made into this artificial country, you might say. Then again, there's quite a lot of artificial

00:08:21.160 countries in the world. This is not unusual. And in any case, even that all being true, that is not

00:08:27.000 the justification for the invasion that he ever gave. If he said, you know, this is Russian territory,

00:08:32.100 we're taking it back, we could then have a debate about whether that's a legitimate casus belli or not,

00:08:38.080 legitimate cause for war or not. But he's kind of saying one thing while claiming a different thing

00:08:43.680 as the cause for this war, which I'm sure we'll get to.

00:08:46.880 No, absolutely. And before we move on, he said that Lenin inexplicably gave these territories away.

00:08:53.880 Right. Sorry to interject, but I'm so incensed about this point. And I have been for the last

00:08:58.360 two years because a lot of people in the West keep saying, there's, you know, right-wing stupid

00:09:04.680 ways of looking at it and left-wing stupid. But one of them is, oh, yeah, Putin is a communist and he's

00:09:09.720 trying to rebuild the USSR, which is just so stupid. Like, he keeps basically criticizing Soviet leaders

00:09:18.040 and Russian leaders. He keeps criticizing Lenin. He keeps criticizing Stalin. He keeps criticizing Khrushchev.

00:09:25.280 And what he's basically saying is, it's my duty to undo the mistakes of the past leaders, particularly the

00:09:34.160 Soviet leaders. And so he's not trying to rebuild the Soviet Union at all. What he's trying to rebuild

00:09:39.480 is the Russian Empire. He's trying to recapitulate within the Russian state, the Russian lands that

00:09:46.940 have historically Russian populated by Russian people.

00:09:50.360 Absolutely. And it was very, very clear when he spoke about it. And if you took the time to actually

00:09:55.380 listen, you'd understand. But there was one point that we both found very interesting. And we've got

00:10:00.100 the clip coming up here, which is him talking about Poland and in 1939.

00:10:05.740 Before you play it, this is actually the entire point of the historical monologue. And this is like

00:10:11.720 the quintessential bit that tells you what he's actually saying. I really recommend people pay

00:10:16.180 attention to this. So here it is.

00:10:17.620 In 1939, after Poland cooperated with Hitler, he did collaborate with Hitler, you know, Hitler offered

00:10:26.600 Poland peace and a treaty of friendship, an alliance demanding in return that Poland give back to Germany

00:10:37.160 the so-called Danzig corridor, which connected the bulk of Germany with East Prussia and Königsberg.

00:10:44.120 After World War I, this territory was transferred to Poland and instead of Danzig, a city of Gdansk emerged.

00:11:01.720 Hitler asked them to give it amicably, but they refused.

00:11:05.960 Of course.

00:11:06.280 Still, they collaborated with Hitler and engaged together in the partitioning of Czechoslovakia.

00:11:15.160 But may I ask you, you're making the case that Ukraine, certainly parts of Ukraine, Eastern Ukraine is,

00:11:20.920 in effect, Russia has been for hundreds of years. Why wouldn't you just take it when you became president

00:11:28.760 24 years ago? You have nuclear weapons, they don't. If it's actually your land, why did you wait so long?

00:11:34.120 Sure. I'll tell you. I'm coming to that. This briefing is coming to an end. It might be boring,

00:11:41.800 but it explains many things. So when we both watched it, I watched it and I went,

00:11:47.480 there's something off about that. And I saw you have quite a visceral reaction. Why was that?

00:11:51.400 Well, first of all, notice that in the entire interview, he never actually answers this point

00:11:56.680 that Tucker made, which is actually a good interjection from Tucker number one. But basically,

00:12:01.640 if you listen to what he's saying, first of all, I mean, the history of that period is quite

00:12:05.960 complicated. He talks about how Poland cooperated with the Germans in the Czech thing. A little bit

00:12:11.880 of truth to that. But what's interesting is he doesn't mention that the Soviet Union collaborated

00:12:16.600 with Germany to split Poland in 1939. And the Soviet Union actually got the bigger half of Poland in that

00:12:23.080 process. But there's something even more interesting in this entire thing than that, which he says,

00:12:29.400 Poland was given an opportunity to amicably give back to Germany the land that it rightfully was taken.

00:12:38.200 And he's basically setting up the argument for his own territorial recapture aspirations, which is,

00:12:45.160 you know, we made lots of peaceful overtures to about this being our land. And we were rebuffed. And

00:12:51.320 he's essentially saying Poland started World War Two by refusing what it should have done, which is give

00:12:56.760 the land back to back to Germany. Yeah. And this is the core of his historical argument is we are entitled

00:13:04.760 to our former land. And that's why he's presenting Poland as the essentially the party that started World

00:13:13.080 War Two, when in fact, actually, the Soviet Union helped Germany to split Poland between the Soviet Union

00:13:22.200 and Nazi Germany under the secret protocol to the Mozart of Ribbentrop Act, which people know about

00:13:27.720 the Nazi Soviet Alliance, which lasted for two years, during which time the Soviet Union provided food,

00:13:33.960 grain, oil and other supplies to Germany, including diplomatic help as well. So this is the core of

00:13:41.320 his historical argument, essentially. Countries are allowed to retake their land. And if the other

00:13:47.080 country which currently has it refuses to give it, we can come in and take it. But don't you find it

00:13:52.520 quite interesting as because that's clearly not correct. It's historically incorrect. So he's justifying

00:14:02.200 the war and the invasion with a point that's historically incorrect. I don't know that it is

00:14:06.840 historically incorrect. I mean, look, this is a point I've made. People don't like hearing this,

00:14:14.280 but it is true. Hitler had a stronger case for annexing the Sudeten land, reoccupying Czechoslovakia,

00:14:23.720 the Anschluss, his claims to Polish lands, were in these terms, on this basis, I'm not saying I agree

00:14:31.320 with it, but on the basis that a country is entitled to recapture lands that are populated by its former

00:14:37.560 populations, by its ethnic speakers who are being mistreated there. I mean, the German, the Treaty of

00:14:43.880 Versailles took massive German populated lands and gave them to countries that didn't exist on a map at that

00:14:50.520 point. You know, during the period prior to the Treaty of Versailles, Poland didn't exist as it is

00:14:55.880 then or now. The Czechoslovakia didn't exist. These lands were populated to some extent by Germans,

00:15:01.640 in the Sudetenland in particular, who were being maltreated, not least because of what Germany did

00:15:06.520 in World War I. So it's not that it's historically inaccurate so much. It's that if we operate on this

00:15:13.720 basis, we would never stop having wars. You know, and from an American perspective, for example,

00:15:20.440 I find it strange that Americans could go along with this argument. Half of America used to be Mexico.

00:15:25.720 You know, Calais used to be England. You know, we can carry on down this path forever. And in fact,

00:15:32.360 you know, the two world wars in Europe, basically over Alsace-Lorraine, who owns this tiny bit of

00:15:37.080 land between Germany and France. How long do you want to keep the shit going?

00:15:40.920 No, absolutely. Absolutely. And it just, it seems that the people agreeing with this point are people

00:15:47.160 who fundamentally don't understand history, and don't understand conflict, and don't understand

00:15:51.880 conflict over territory. Or don't want to. Yeah. Because we've got to recognize, you know,

00:15:56.200 you and I on this show have been covering the fact that there's a section of the extreme left

00:16:02.120 that has become fundamentally anti-Western and anti-American in particular. Yeah. And a chunk

00:16:08.120 of those people are big fans of Putin and what he's doing for that reason. And so they will believe

00:16:13.640 anything that he says. And there are also people on the extreme right. I don't mean the far right,

00:16:17.720 but the people who are the anti-establishment right. There's a section of that group.

00:16:21.960 It's hard to call them anti-American because they think they're patriots, but they are so

00:16:28.440 anti the American elite that they see anyone who hates the American elite as much as they do as an

00:16:34.120 ally without realizing what we'll, I'm sure, talk about later, what Putin wants for America, which

00:16:39.720 is decline. And he talks about it quite openly later on. Let's talk about later. Yeah. So we'll come to

00:16:44.840 that later on in the interview. Now, Putin was actually very interesting because this is the longest

00:16:50.920 time that I, this is the only time I've ever seen him interviewed. And he struck a very conciliatory

00:16:57.000 note. So when he was talking about the post-Soviet NATO expansion, he was saying, look, all we wanted

00:17:02.360 was to be part of your club. And at every turn we were, we were rebuffed. What were we meant to do?

00:17:09.560 Now, how much of that is accurate? And how much of that is him spinning a yarn to make Russia look

00:17:15.320 like the victim? Well, the thing is, nobody really knows because he keeps alluding to these conversations

00:17:19.880 that he had with Western leaders. And he says, this is what I said. And Tucker says, well, what did

00:17:23.640 they say back? Yeah. And he says, well, I can't reveal private conversations. You should talk to

00:17:27.880 them. He talks about one instance in particular where he said to Bill Clinton, you know, what would

00:17:33.160 happen if Russia applied to join NATO? And Clinton sort of says, oh, that'd be interesting. And then

00:17:38.360 apparently later, having spoken to his team, Clinton says, actually, we couldn't do that.

00:17:43.400 And Tucker quite smartly says to him, well, would Russia have joined? And Putin gives this very coy

00:17:49.800 answer like, well, we would have seen. So none of us knows whether his question was sincere or whether

00:17:56.680 the answer was sincere, whether the conversation happened the way that he recalls it. But also,

00:18:02.680 I think there's a truth to what Putin says, which is, I don't think NATO would have welcomed Russia because

00:18:08.200 Russia is too big a country to absorb with too strong a view of its own. And just the entire

00:18:16.520 rationale of NATO would not have made sense in that sense. So perhaps that may well be Russia's

00:18:23.240 experience post. But whether that justifies everything that's happened since is a different

00:18:28.520 question. Yeah. But it's a quite ingenious PR tactic to not come out as a strong man, which is

00:18:34.920 everybody associates him with. But to come out and say, look, we just wanted to be part of the club.

00:18:41.240 But the thing is, this argument that the West was so hostile to Russia that he makes and he says,

00:18:46.120 you know, the Cold War commentators just needed to continue their grift, basically, is what he's

00:18:51.320 implying. So they kept banging, you know, talking down Russia and saying it's a threat. Was that your

00:18:57.320 experience of the last 20 years? No. Because it wasn't mine. You know, London has been overrun by Russian

00:19:03.720 money. Quite a lot of illegitimate money being laundered here. Likewise, America is infiltrated,

00:19:10.440 had been infiltrated with Russian money. You know, Russia was not seen really as a hostile force in

00:19:18.440 this country, certainly in this country and in Europe, not in Germany, not in other places. In fact,

00:19:23.080 there was a lot of business being done. So this idea that the West, you know, has been attacking Russia

00:19:28.680 or rejecting Russia since the collapse of the Soviet Union. I don't think that's observably true.

00:19:35.400 Oh, OK. Now, a lot of so there's some people, people like John Mearsheimer have made this point

00:19:41.960 who have said, you know, Ukraine was meant to be neutral. It was meant to be a neutral nation.

00:19:48.040 It was meant to be a buffer in between Russia and the West. And then, and this is to quote

00:19:54.760 Vladimir Putin, it became a satellite state. Yeah. And he talks about five rounds of NATO expansion.

00:20:01.080 Yeah. And actually, I have to say on this this issue, I think he has a pretty good point. Like,

00:20:07.720 this is an irritant for Russia, for sure. And we've talked about this before. Right. I think when we

00:20:13.240 first ever talked about, he said to me, well, would Putin have invaded if NATO hadn't been expanding?

00:20:17.400 And the truth is, we don't know. Yeah. Right. Certainly a factor in all of this. And it is

00:20:21.800 absolutely an irritant to Russia. But the difference is that I think Putin sees that as a deliberate ploy

00:20:29.720 to corner and antagonize Russia. Whereas I think NATO expansion is largely a product of some very crude and

00:20:37.320 basic things like every time NATO expands, that means the weaponry of that country that it's just

00:20:42.680 expanded to is changed to NATO standard, which creates a lot of money for Western companies or

00:20:48.760 American companies, to be specific, to come in, rearm the entire country. So the American defense

00:20:53.880 contractors are very interested in NATO expansion. So it's not that people wanted to, you know, oppress

00:20:59.400 poor little Vladimir Putin. It was more various things. Now, it doesn't excuse NATO expansion

00:21:05.880 because promises were made. But the other reason, of course, is most of all of the countries that

00:21:11.160 have joined NATO were terrified of Russia's renewed aggression, which they've experienced over

00:21:15.320 centuries. And so they wanted to join. So it's like they wanted to join. And there was a lot of

00:21:19.960 business interest in having them join. And that's probably why that happened. But certainly,

00:21:25.560 it's an irritant to Russia, for sure. Absolutely. And whilst your explanation of it sounds plausible,

00:21:32.280 there is a certain amount, again, I'm not saying what Russia did was correct, but I'm saying

00:21:36.440 NATO needs to take some responsibility because you may do something which you don't think is an

00:21:43.160 antagonistic gesture, but can be perceived at that. And that's partly your responsibility,

00:21:48.280 isn't it? Agreed. Especially if you go against previous agreements, because then Russia will look

00:21:52.920 at it and go, well, how can we trust you? We signed the document. You've broken the document.

00:21:57.400 Therefore, what's the point in having any agreement? And by the way, one of the, I think,

00:22:00.360 the big cultural differences here is obviously Russia is not a democracy. And so Putin doesn't

00:22:06.200 understand that he's dealing with societies where the leadership changes regularly. And that means

00:22:12.120 the strategic priorities, decisions, you know, policies change over time. And so he's like, well,

00:22:19.240 in 1997, they promised me this. Well, not 97 in his case, you know, 1999, 2000, 2003, they promised me this.

00:22:27.560 And then six years later, they did that. Right. But he's not taken into account as a different

00:22:33.000 president by that point from a different political party, for example. Right. So I think that's one

00:22:37.240 of the big miscommunications there is he's sort of treating America and the West as one thing that

00:22:43.160 speaks with one voice, like Russia has spoken with one voice since 1999, since when he took over.

00:22:49.480 And that discontinuity of leadership has been an issue here too. Absolutely. Let's just have a quick

00:22:55.080 look at this clip because we're going to discuss that now. Elliot, it's a 2014 clip.

00:23:00.440 So in 2008, the doors of NATO were opened for Ukraine. In 2014, there was a coup. They started

00:23:08.440 persecuting those who did not accept the coup. And it was indeed a coup. They created a threat to Crimea,

00:23:15.240 which we had to take under our protection. They launched the war in Donbas in 2014 with the use of

00:23:22.040 aircraft and artillery against civilians. This is when it all started. There's a video of aircraft

00:23:29.640 attacking Donetsk from above. They launched a large-scale military operation, then another one.

00:23:37.720 When they failed, they started to prepare the next one. All this against the background of military

00:23:43.560 development of this territory and opening of NATO's doors. How could we not express concern over what

00:23:51.240 was happening? From our side, this would have been a culpable negligence. That's what it would have been.

00:23:58.360 Now, he uses the word coup, and that's a pretty strong word. And he also says, you know, that this

00:24:05.560 was backed by the CIA, etc, etc, etc. What do you make of that? Is that a fair representation of events?

00:24:12.040 So this is the point where I think the paranoia partly caused by NATO expansion is starting to

00:24:17.880 play its part because I can see why he would see it in this way. However, it really isn't what happened.

00:24:25.240 So in the clip we played, we don't include the bit where he talked about the trade agreement. And this

00:24:30.360 is the really important part. So he talked about the fact that basically Ukraine was about to sign a

00:24:36.920 trade agreement with the EU. And then the president Yanukovych, who was basically a pro-Russian, or you

00:24:42.600 might say a Russian puppet, whichever way you look at it, he was pro-Russian. Essentially, Putin's argument

00:24:49.400 is Yanukovych realized that if he did a free trade deal with the EU, that would mean Ukraine's free trade deal

00:24:56.600 with Russia would no longer be in place. That would be economically not what Ukraine should do.

00:25:03.480 And so Yanukovych went back on this deal, which is why those evil Westerners organized a coup.

00:25:09.560 This is completely not what happened. What actually happened was Yanukovych promised to sign the trade

00:25:14.840 agreement, and then he went back on it. Now, the reason for that may or may not be perfectly legitimate.

00:25:20.520 It might have been pressure from Russia. It might have been that he thought it was not a good deal

00:25:24.120 for Ukraine. None of us know, right? However, what happened is a few students in Kyiv went out on the

00:25:30.600 street to protest against us because they were pro-Western and they wanted Ukraine to move in a

00:25:34.600 pro-Western direction, representing about half of Ukrainian society. But a small group of students,

00:25:39.560 you know, protests happened, right? They were brutally beaten by the police. And when pictures on videos of this

00:25:47.960 event went basically viral in Ukraine, people then came out on the streets to protest against what

00:25:54.920 they saw as a tyrannical government brutalizing its citizens. And that is when the street protests

00:26:00.600 started in Ukraine, right? So what ended up being the Maidan revolution was started because of that

00:26:09.160 rejection of the deal and then the police treatment of the protesters, right? And the police continually kept

00:26:17.880 aggravating the situation to the point where eventually over a hundred people were shot and

00:26:22.280 killed by Yanukovych. We don't know exactly which forces it was in those street protests that continued

00:26:28.920 for a long time. And yes, eventually that led to the overthrow of the Yanukovych government.

00:26:34.200 That is what happened. So is that a CIA-backed coup? Now, I think it's probably true that the West saw this

00:26:42.120 as an opportunity to help Ukraine move in a Western direction. And this is, by the way,

00:26:47.080 true of all revolutions. I mean, if you look at the American Revolution, something of which many people

00:26:52.280 who are very critical of this are very proud of, the American Revolution was basically funded by the

00:26:57.080 French. Yeah. To the point where the French Revolution happened because the French state was so bankrupt

00:27:02.680 after funding the American Revolution that they didn't have any money and the whole country went tits up.

00:27:07.960 Yeah. So every revolution in history has always been supported by the enemies of the superpower that

00:27:13.640 was in the... Do you know what I mean? Yeah, of course. The Venezuelan revolution was exactly the same,

00:27:17.320 funded by the British. Every revolution is like this, right? So, but what I'm saying is the catalyst

00:27:22.440 for this was not the CIA. The catalyst for this was the brutal treatment of the protesters, which then

00:27:28.120 spiraled into street protests, which then got more brutal treatment, which eventually ended in this.

00:27:33.400 Now, what's interesting is two occasions in this interview, continuing from here, Putin talks about,

00:27:38.680 well, in 2014, this happened, and then there was a threat to Crimea. Never says, well, what was the

00:27:45.160 threat exactly? Crimea was Ukrainian territory. What was the threat to Crimea? Never explains this, right?

00:27:51.240 And it's a pity that Tucker never challenged him, because I would really like to have heard this.

00:27:55.080 Now, what he actually means, I suspect, don't know. I don't know what Putin means. I wish someone had

00:28:01.640 asked him. But the Sevastopol naval base has been a massive issue for Russia-Ukraine relationships since

00:28:08.280 1991, because it's basically the port in the Black Sea from which Russia is able to project its power into

00:28:14.680 the Mediterranean. And the debate about who it should belong to, who should be controlling it,

00:28:21.240 whose soldiers and sailors should be stationed there, had been ongoing since 1991. Well, basically,

00:28:27.240 Russia is paranoid about that becoming A, unavailable to Russia, and certainly B, falling into

00:28:33.880 American hands. So I guess what he means is there was a threat that Ukraine would become pro-Western,

00:28:40.600 and therefore we would lose access to Sevastopol, so we had to take Crimea. But he never elaborates

00:28:45.400 that, which is very, very telling. And also, as well, he alludes to the fact that the Ukrainian

00:28:51.000 elections, they weren't honest. There was something fundamentally dodgy about it. Well, he talks about

00:28:57.000 the coup, I think that's what he meant. Yeah, the coup, but also he talked about Zelensky being elected,

00:29:02.120 and how that wasn't particularly fair either. No, he talked about Yanukovych and Yushchenko taking over

00:29:08.600 from him. So his argument basically is, you know, I had my guys in Ukraine, and they were not getting

00:29:15.960 re-elected through various means. It was all the CIA. Yeah. That's his argument. Yeah. So he sounds

00:29:20.440 like a Latino. Right. So we've got, and then moving on, he starts talking, and this is where

00:29:28.200 he starts to get even more conspiratorial, which is the whole denazification thing. He uses that word,

00:29:35.320 denazification, and he goes into the historical element of it. Yeah. How accurate is a historical

00:29:41.720 element? Again, his historical telling of what happened in history is accurate. So what he's

00:29:48.440 saying is absolutely true. During World War II, there was a section of Ukraine, I mean, we can call

00:29:54.840 them Ukrainian nationalists, and we probably should, because that's accurate. They were actually not part of

00:30:01.160 Russia or the Soviet Union at the time. They were mostly living in what was

00:30:05.880 Polish territory, if you like, who were basically fascists. Yeah. You've got to remember,

00:30:12.760 they were not Nazis. They were fascists. There is a difference. People these days don't understand

00:30:16.760 the difference. You've got to remember, quite a lot of Europe was fascist at this time. Yeah,

00:30:20.200 absolutely. Spain was fascist. Portugal was fascist. There was a significant fascist movement,

00:30:24.440 obviously in Italy, a significant fascist movement in central Europe and southern Europe. There's quite

00:30:30.760 a lot of them about. I mean, one of my favorite historical factoid is the people who defended the

00:30:35.480 Reichstag was a unit of the SS called SS Charlemagne, made up completely of French fascists,

00:30:43.320 defending the Reichstag in the last days of the Nazi war effort. My point is, a lot of Europe

00:30:49.160 was fascist at the time, and these people were nationalists in that they wanted independence

00:30:54.120 actually originally from Poland. Yeah. And they saw Hitler's invasion as an opportunity to free

00:31:00.920 themselves both from Poland and from the threat of Soviet occupation. Okay. And these people were

00:31:05.960 horrible people. And Putin's absolutely right. They killed Russians, they killed the Poles,

00:31:10.840 and they killed the Jews. And they hated all of those people. And Putin is also right,

00:31:16.040 that in the attempt to build a Ukrainian identity, a lot of mistakes were made, including promoting

00:31:21.240 some of these people, mainly because to a large extent, because of historical ignorance,

00:31:25.800 they're sort of seen as the only people who fought for the independence of Ukraine. So their

00:31:30.200 crimes are kind of ignored. It's not the same as saying Ukraine is now pro-Nazi or anything like that,

00:31:37.720 because nobody in Ukraine is... No, sorry, not nobody. Every country has a small Nazi contingent.

00:31:43.480 Russia, by the way. I mean, Dmitry Rogozin, I always make this point, who was the deputy prime

00:31:48.600 minister of Russia and headed Russia's equivalent of NASA until recently, if not still. He's on camera

00:31:56.280 openly giving the Nazi salute and saying Russia for Russians and all this other stuff. So there's a

00:32:00.440 Nazi problem in all of Eastern Europe. But my point is, Ukrainian society is not overrun by Nazis.

00:32:06.360 And Tucker actually very effectively challenges him on this. And he says, look, whatever you say about

00:32:11.320 these people, you know, you're talking about Ukrainian nationalism. How do you deal with that? And

00:32:15.880 again, Putin doesn't address it. What I thought was more interesting in terms of this kind of world

00:32:22.120 view is Putin says, we didn't start the war in 2022. The war started in 2014 when they attacked Ukraine,

00:32:32.120 attacked the Eastern regions. We saw it in the clip that we just played. And this is just nonsense,

00:32:36.920 factual nonsense. It's like saying, you know, in the early 90s, when I still lived in Russia,

00:32:44.840 Chechnya tried to break away from Russia. So what did Russia do? Russia attempted to prevent that from

00:32:51.240 happening by force. So what countries tend to do when a region, basically a bunch of armed men say,

00:32:57.240 this is no longer part of this country, right? It's quite normal thing to do. And that's basically what

00:33:02.520 happened in the Eastern regions. When this revolution happened in 2014, there were some people in the

00:33:09.080 Eastern regions who basically started an armed uprising, backed by Russia, who wanted to break

00:33:16.920 away from Ukraine. And Ukraine attempted to suppress this rebellion, which is quite common in history,

00:33:23.240 really. So it's not that Ukraine started a war, it's that it attempted to do exactly what Vladimir Putin

00:33:29.320 tried to do and eventually succeeded in doing in Chechnya, which is to prevent an armed rebellion

00:33:33.800 and a breakaway republic from breaking away. And to say that then in 2022, he continued defending

00:33:42.520 Russia by reinvading Ukraine after, you know, it's just complete nonsense. That's the bit where he's

00:33:49.320 just not telling the truth. So, and it's very interesting that, because it is complete nonsense,

00:33:55.400 which makes me think, why is it, why do you think he's saying that? Why, because...

00:34:00.120 Well, he's given that way at the beginning of the interview. This is what I'm saying.

00:34:03.800 He sees this as Russian land. And when Russian people rise up to rejoin Russia,

00:34:11.560 it's his duty as the patriarch of all Russia to protect his fellow countrymen. And he keeps saying

00:34:16.920 this, these are our people, they speak our language, we've got to protect them.

00:34:19.640 Yeah. It's just very interesting because a lot of the time I'm listening to him and I go,

00:34:25.640 well, I may not, I may, I don't know the background of what he's saying, but it sounds plausible.

00:34:31.080 There are other things that he's saying where I go, oh, I don't agree, but I can understand why

00:34:36.280 you're saying that. And then there's other bits, like in that bit where I go, well, this is just

00:34:41.240 completely disingenuous. And I would have expected him to have been a lot more skillful when talking

00:34:48.280 about that instead of giving what was actually an outright lie.

00:34:52.680 Well, that is how he sees it. I genuinely think he believes it. I mean, I think that is how he sees

00:34:58.840 it. And I think we talked about the paranoia of the CIA and all of this stuff may have some basis,

00:35:04.680 by the way, you know, big powerful countries try to influence each other, you know, do they do all

00:35:09.240 that? You know, he's influencing how he sees everything. And so when a bunch of Russian

00:35:15.720 opposition activists start something in Russia, he can't imagine that anybody would oppose his rule.

00:35:22.520 And he sees that as a CIA asset. Like, you know, I've, we've gone to extinction rebellion protests

00:35:28.760 in this country, or anti-British protests, or pro-Palestine protests, but never occurs to me

00:35:34.840 that they're being funded by the CIA, or Mossad, or, you know, the KGB, or whatever, right. But in his

00:35:42.360 mind, any opposition to him, or to his country's interests, or whatever, is funded by the CIA. And

00:35:48.120 that is how he sees the world, not least because he used to be an intelligence secret service operative

00:35:54.120 himself. And so to him, of course, everything is happening, because the CIA is doing it,

00:35:59.080 because he knows that's how he operates and how his country operates.

00:36:02.760 Yeah. So what it does, in a sense, is engender a quite paranoid way of looking at the world.

00:36:08.360 And he's been in power for 25 years, which, as we know, is not exactly conducive to a kind of open-minded

00:36:13.640 and... Yeah. And anybody who gives him bad news, I can't imagine he takes it particularly well,

00:36:19.000 or challenges a viewpoint.

00:36:20.680 Well, a lot of people have said, and I think there's some credibility to this, is one of

00:36:25.160 the reasons that he actually did invade Ukraine in 2022, was that he thought it was going to be

00:36:30.920 a walk in the park. If you look at what they tried to do militarily, it didn't look like someone

00:36:38.040 seriously who thought they were in a serious conflict. They went in with far too few troops,

00:36:44.680 they were not well prepared, and they took very heavy casualties. Because I think what he was told

00:36:51.240 is, you know, that the Ukrainian people will rise up and welcome you, because they're not Ukrainian,

00:36:54.840 they're Russian. And he just told you that. There's no such thing as Ukrainian people. They don't have a

00:36:58.920 national identity. They see themselves as Russia, and they welcome back. And in fact,

00:37:04.280 the very end of the interview tells this incredible story about how, apparently, these Russian soldiers

00:37:10.760 encircled some Ukrainian soldiers and said, surrender, lay down your arms. And apparently,

00:37:15.720 those Ukrainian soldiers said, Russians don't surrender, and we're all killed.

00:37:20.280 Right. So, in his mind, there are no Ukrainians. Yeah. There are, like, brainwashed Nazis,

00:37:26.120 and then there's the majority of them who are Russians, who are just desperate to rejoin the

00:37:30.200 motherland. That's how he sees it. Which is very interesting that he could have got,

00:37:35.000 somebody so powerful could have got it so wrong. But then, if you obliterate anybody who disagrees

00:37:40.360 with you, that's, you're going to get, you're going to get an echo chamber. And we've got an

00:37:43.400 interview coming out with historian, and I think, you know, well-informed guy called Mark Gagliotti,

00:37:48.040 who makes this very point. Absolutely. Now, he is at pains to say continually that

00:37:55.480 he wanted peace talks. He wanted peace talks. He even blamed Boris Johnson for scuppering them.

00:38:03.240 It's very interesting because, again, presenting himself not as a strong man, but as this conciliatory

00:38:08.600 figure who's been put in this position where he has no choice but to behave in this manner.

00:38:14.680 Well, I agree mostly with what you're saying. I would just maybe quibble a little bit with your

00:38:18.920 analysis. I don't think he's presenting himself not as a strong man. I think what he's presenting

00:38:23.160 himself as is a strong man who's reasonable. Yes. Right? So he's like, we invaded, and we got some

00:38:29.400 progress, and then we were willing to negotiate. And then Boris Johnson scuppered the deal. Now,

00:38:34.040 particularly in these kind of anti-establishment left and right circles, this is a very popular

00:38:41.880 conversation. You know, Boris Johnson prevented peace. Naftali Bennett, the Israeli prime minister,

00:38:46.680 had a deal ready. It's actually, Eli, are you about to pull up the article that I sent you?

00:38:52.600 Naftali Bennett, the prime minister of Israel, who's allegedly, you know, the deal was ready,

00:38:59.720 and it basically came out and said, this is not true. The deal was really scuppered by the fact

00:39:04.920 that when Russian soldiers pulled out of the area they occupied near Kyiv, a lot of Russian atrocities,

00:39:12.040 including Bucha, were found. And from that point on, there was just, you know, the Ukrainian society

00:39:17.000 was not going to do a deal. Yeah. And that's basically what happened. In terms of Boris Johnson,

00:39:22.040 none of us know the details of that deal, because it hasn't been revealed. But my understanding is,

00:39:26.040 basically, they wanted significant territorial concessions and all kinds of other concessions.

00:39:31.080 And Boris Johnson was saying, no, you know, we'll help you fight and win back your land.

00:39:36.280 Has that proven to be the right decision in the long run? Probably not at this point, because Ukraine,

00:39:41.320 given the dwindling support in the West for continuing to support Ukraine at the level it

00:39:46.760 would have needed to actually be able to do that. It hasn't turned out to be a good decision,

00:39:51.720 I think. But at the time, you know, you don't know what the future is going to be. So I think

00:39:56.520 Johnson's argument was, we're on your side, we'll help you win the war, or win back your land,

00:40:02.040 or whatever it is. Which is not an unreasonable thing to say to somebody who's about to basically

00:40:07.640 surrender. Yeah. And he also addresses this idea that Russia was going to take Ukraine and it was

00:40:15.080 going to continue expanding. And he said, look, I'm not going to do that. Why would I do that

00:40:21.160 when actually that is going to bring us to the brink of global war? I'm not crazy.

00:40:25.480 I'll remind you that in 2014, he said Russian soldiers are not in Crimea, and then gave out

00:40:31.240 medals to Russian soldiers who were in Crimea for taking Crimea. Right? Not everything Vladimir Putin

00:40:37.320 says is always true. Right? Now, you also got to remember, right, we've talked about this in the past,

00:40:43.080 and I've said he absolutely has territorial ambitions beyond Ukraine. And he does, in my

00:40:48.280 opinion, I'll explain to you why. However, does that mean that now, after what happened in Ukraine,

00:40:55.160 he's going to invade Poland? No. Right? Because one of the things that we've noticed is,

00:41:01.000 he's clearly didn't expect the result that he got in Ukraine, even though I would argue that he's

00:41:06.680 winning. Yeah. Right. But the cost is very high to him and to Russia, etc. But if you play the

00:41:16.120 argument that he's making right at the beginning of the interview for 30 minutes, there's a reason

00:41:19.720 he spends that much time. He said it was going to take 30 seconds. Yeah. It takes 30 minutes.

00:41:24.200 His argument is, these are our lands populated by Russian speakers. Is Ukraine the only country

00:41:29.720 populated with some Russian speakers? What about Latvia? What about Lithuania?

00:41:33.400 What about Estonia? There's Russian minorities there. By the way, if you want to make the

00:41:38.360 argument that they're oppressed, absolutely. You know, the Russian language is not permitted as

00:41:42.920 the second state language, all sorts of things going on. So there's plenty that he could do if he was,

00:41:49.400 if he found what happened in Ukraine. If Ukraine crumbled in three days, there's no reason why he

00:41:54.680 wouldn't like, look, NATO is obviously a strong disincentive. But my point is, you know, to say now that

00:42:01.320 he's going to be like rushing into Poland is crazy. He's not. You know, even though I think he's going

00:42:07.000 to get a form of win in Ukraine and therefore be disincentivized, he has an expansionist view

00:42:16.040 of Russia because what he's trying to do is recapitulate the Russian empire.

00:42:19.800 Right. And because he was coming, his argument was that he didn't want to endanger the world

00:42:25.640 when that's something that I don't think you particularly care about when you invade another

00:42:30.920 country illegally, because that is already a destabilizing event. Right. Right. And so if he

00:42:37.480 saw Russian speakers be oppressed in Latvia, you know, would he start a conversation about that?

00:42:43.000 Would he see if if NATO had entirely did nothing about Ukraine? Would he see what maybe NATO is not

00:42:49.000 going to do anything? Do you know what I mean? Yeah. So I think the the challenge to his invasion

00:42:54.280 of Ukraine was very important, not least because it has deterred further aggression. Yeah. And he was

00:43:00.280 speaking about the multipolar world and the world that we are now moving into. And at one point,

00:43:05.800 it sounded like a trigonometry guest. And I was it was it was very interesting to hear him analyze it in

00:43:11.800 this way. But he was talking about the multipolar world and he compared the US to the Roman Empire

00:43:18.760 in this clip. And it's a very interesting clip, actually, if you can play it and we'll dissect it

00:43:23.000 afterwards. My opinion is that the development of the world community is in accordance with inherent

00:43:28.760 laws and those laws are what they are. It's always been this way in the history of mankind. Some nations

00:43:39.000 and countries rose, became stronger and more numerous, and then left the international stage,

00:43:45.720 losing the status they had accustomed to. There is probably no need for me to give examples, but

00:43:53.560 we could start with the Genghis Khan and Horde conquerors, the Golden Horde, and then end with the

00:43:59.640 Roman Empire. It seems that there has never been anything like the Roman Empire in the history of

00:44:05.880 mankind. Nevertheless, the potential of the barbarians gradually grew, as did their population.

00:44:14.920 In general, the barbarians were getting stronger and begun to develop economically, as we would say

00:44:20.360 today. This eventually led to the collapse of the Roman Empire and the regime imposed by the Romans.

00:44:31.400 However, it took five centuries for the Roman Empire to fall apart. The difference with what is

00:44:39.320 happening now is that all the processes of change are happening at a much faster pace than in Roman times.

00:44:48.040 And it was very interesting because he said those words and he had a, dare I say, a smug little smile

00:44:54.680 on his face when he said it. Well, this is the one thing that a lot of these, I, look, I don't like

00:45:00.680 antagonizing people, but it does irritate me when people don't understand what's going on because they

00:45:04.280 don't listen and they only listen to the things they want to hear. Yeah. Right. For example, the

00:45:08.200 Naftali Bennett thing that I brought up, like, you can google it in three seconds that Naftali Bennett has

00:45:12.440 basically denounced the things that are being said about what he said. But nobody does. Yeah. And the

00:45:18.040 same with Putin's speeches. He's been saying since day one, American dominance is over, the time for

00:45:23.400 the multi-polar world is coming. And what he means by it is what he's just explained to you. And I wish

00:45:29.160 people would just get it. What he's saying is very simple. There are natural laws of history, which is

00:45:34.680 population and economy is destiny. China, India, Russia, BRICS as a whole, we are the new force

00:45:45.480 on the block. America, Europe and the West is in decline. And either you accept this and go gently,

00:45:55.160 quietly into the night, or it's going to be a painful process like the one you're experiencing now.

00:46:00.520 Right. He's saying your time is up. You're not going to be the world leaders anymore. It's over.

00:46:06.440 That is literally what he's saying over and over and over. And people are like, you're a warmonger.

00:46:13.400 I'm like, that's what he's saying. And he just told you again, watch the interview. He says this

00:46:19.400 over and over. And every time the idea of the multi-polar world comes up, that is exactly what

00:46:23.400 he's saying. He's saying the American elites are clinging onto the power of the American dominance.

00:46:28.360 They're using the American dollar. They're using this. They're using that to try and dominate the

00:46:32.440 world. Your time is up. It's over. Right. And he keeps referring to this conspiracy theory that is

00:46:39.640 very popular in Russia and also in parts of the third world, which is the golden billion idea.

00:46:44.760 Yeah. And so he mentioned the golden billion. And I mean, it sounds like a rapper. What is the

00:46:51.320 golden billion? That is a great name for a rapper. Yeah. It's a brilliant name.

00:46:55.000 Look, the golden billion is an idea that's been popular in Russia since, like, even in, you know,

00:46:59.800 my childhood and even Cold War times. And it's basically the idea that what the Americans really

00:47:04.440 want, the Americans in the West in particular, is for there to be an elite group of people,

00:47:10.120 the top billion people in the world who are rich and comfortable, and for everybody else to be

00:47:15.320 essentially enslaved to them, for them to profit off and to live in poverty for the rest of eternity.

00:47:21.480 Right. So the golden billion, they're going to be rich and prosperous and comfortable,

00:47:25.640 and everybody else is going to live in mud shacks. And that's what apparently the Americans want.

00:47:30.200 And this is universal. And he believes and he keeps repeating and so do lots of people,

00:47:34.280 which is interesting, given the evidence, not only the evidence, but what he himself is saying about how

00:47:40.200 actually China, India, you know, Latin American countries are doing, Brazil obviously are doing

00:47:46.280 incredibly well, Indonesia. The world's population has been lifted out of poverty at a scale that is

00:47:55.480 completely unprecedented in the recent decades, for one reason, and one reason in particular,

00:48:01.320 which is free market, the spread of free market capitalism around the world. That's why people

00:48:06.120 are getting wealthier in those parts of the world. So the idea that Westerners want to oppress everybody

00:48:11.720 else at their expense so that we can be rich. It's just factually and obviously and observably

00:48:17.640 incorrect. But when we talk about a paranoid conspiratorial worldview, if you think about it,

00:48:24.840 there's nothing more paranoid and conspiratorial than believing that other people want to keep you

00:48:30.600 poor, even though you can see the main thing. Look, I'm not saying America doesn't want to be the

00:48:37.800 richest country in the world. And I'm not saying American corporations don't want to exploit the

00:48:43.080 wealth and the resources of other countries, but other countries also want to exploit the wealth and

00:48:47.240 resources of America and of other countries too. This is the global economic game, right?

00:48:53.320 But what has happened with global trade, it has been disruptive for all societies, but it has also been

00:48:58.840 massively beneficial to those societies around the world, which is why everybody is so much richer,

00:49:06.040 so much wealthier and so much more comfortable. So this is just like a complete conspiracy

00:49:11.320 that he and a lot of people in that part of the world believe.

00:49:15.320 And you know what's really interesting as well is there was a disingenuousness about it when he

00:49:20.360 was talking about their alliance with China, when from the people that we've spoken to, including

00:49:26.360 Mark Gagliotti, saying the Chinese, you know, it's they're not that friendly with the Russians.

00:49:31.720 Look, the Chinese, they're very sensible and they have a very long view of history.

00:49:38.440 But I can tell you, Russia is absolutely terrified of China. Absolutely terrified. Most of the Far East

00:49:45.640 of Russia is increasingly being effectively taken over by Chinese people who are moving in en masse,

00:49:52.280 taking over local businesses, whatever. And as Putin himself acknowledges, China's a huge country,

00:49:58.760 very, very powerful. And he says, we've been living peacefully together with a massive border for

00:50:04.360 peacefully is a very dubious statement, given some of the things that happened around World War Two

00:50:08.920 and prior to that. So, you know, it's, it's a complete misnomer. Like, it's not an easy alliance.

00:50:17.880 Putin has been pushed into it by events. But he would much rather be an alliance with the West.

00:50:23.960 Oh, yeah, I completely agree. I think he'd much rather be an alliance with the West than China. And

00:50:29.080 let's talk just a little bit about sanctions, the sanctions that have been imposed on Russia.

00:50:35.160 What effect is that having on the life of the average Russian and the Russian economy?

00:50:39.400 Well, he made this point, actually, that despite the sanctions, Russia was the biggest economy in

00:50:43.960 Europe last year. Yeah. And it speaks to something, you know, I've always been extremely sceptical about

00:50:49.080 the way sanctions have been applied. I mean, the idea that you were going to, you know,

00:50:53.080 degrade Russia's economy with Western sanctions was never true. And what we should have been doing

00:51:00.520 is very specifically targeting the supplies of military equipment, which, by the way, there would

00:51:05.880 have been way more support for around the world. People in India, really, I mean, you know, the people

00:51:10.440 who run India, probably most of the population in India, people in Africa, people in China,

00:51:14.440 they don't really care that much about the war in Ukraine. They were never on board with,

00:51:18.680 you know, slowing down the global economy to like punish Russia. They didn't see that way at all.

00:51:24.440 But they might have well have been on board with sanctions, you know, to prevent missile,

00:51:29.080 missile systems being developed or being built or being, you know, cruise missiles being produced.

00:51:34.600 And the West and Western technology was used in a lot of Russian military equipment.

00:51:40.200 So rather than focusing on the economic sanctions, which have hurt everyone, but really

00:51:44.760 haven't disproportionately hurt Russia, which is kind of what you'd want to do

00:51:48.200 if you were applying sanctions in a smart way, just was not a good idea. And, you know,

00:51:52.360 the West went overboard in a lot of stuff, you know, like banning Russian performers from ballet

00:51:57.320 and stuff. It's just, what are you doing? No, absolutely. I mean, there was ridiculous,

00:52:01.320 you know, instances where people banned dead Russian composers. Yeah, I was picking up someone

00:52:06.600 up at the airport like three months ago and a guy came up to me who just recognized me and was like,

00:52:11.560 look, can you help me out? I'm Russian. I have a Russian passport and they won't let me exchange

00:52:15.400 money. Like, how does a normal person from Russia not being able to change money in an airport in

00:52:20.120 England stop Putin's invasion of Ukraine? So there was a lot of this moral virtue signaling,

00:52:28.040 which the West is now infected with, that got concocted into strategy. And suddenly we were doing

00:52:33.720 all this stupid stuff just so that we could feel good about ourselves instead of being more strategic

00:52:38.120 and practical. Yeah. Before we move on to your questions, so if you want to submit a question

00:52:44.040 for Konstantin, send a super chat and we'll, I'll put them to him after the break. Do you think,

00:52:51.560 on reflection, the two hours, 20 minutes, what do you think that Putin hoped to get out of it? And

00:52:57.080 number two, how do you think he came across? Um, well, this is something interesting because

00:53:05.800 on your second point, how he came across, I think to most people in the West, he actually came across

00:53:10.360 incredibly well, not least because of the contrast with our leaders. Yeah. And part of that, to put it

00:53:17.800 gently, is that some of our leaders are not up to scratch. Some of them have dementia, not mentioning

00:53:24.440 any names, uh, some, and some of them just not very capable, but also you have to recognize another

00:53:32.040 thing, which is something that, you know, as our, you and I, we do the show, our profile increasingly

00:53:37.160 grows. We meet politicians from different parties and we talk to them, you know, in the backgrounds

00:53:42.200 of TV shows and all that sort of thing and elsewhere. Actually, most politicians, many, sorry,

00:53:49.160 some politicians in the West, actually quite impressive people who could also hold court

00:53:53.720 about the history of the UK or the history of America for half an hour if they had the opportunity

00:53:59.000 to be interviewed in the style that Vladimir Putin was interviewed about. And if they had the

00:54:02.840 opportunity to be in power for 25 years, right? It's not, Vladimir Putin didn't give interviews like

00:54:07.800 this in 2001. He was not educated about Russian history. He couldn't talk about it in any authoritative

00:54:14.040 way. Um, well, a lot of Western politicians could, but they're not facing the same media

00:54:20.040 regime. They're constantly interrupted. They're challenged. They're misrepresented endlessly. I

00:54:24.200 mean, look at, you know, an obvious example, how don't, how much was Donald Trump lied about,

00:54:29.800 misrepresented endlessly by his own journalists. Vladimir Putin doesn't have to deal with that.

00:54:34.200 Yeah. Never has. Uh, he got rid of the independent media very quickly.

00:54:38.520 And, you know, whatever you think about the Tucker Carlson interview, it was actually quite in the

00:54:43.560 style of trigonometry interview where you let people talk and you push back every now and again.

00:54:47.640 Um, it was not a confrontational, hostile interview. So he comes across very well.

00:54:53.960 Uh, and by the way, people will say, I'm, you know, I don't like Putin and I don't, but it's not

00:54:59.160 because I don't think he's intelligent or capable or smart strategically. He is all those things.

00:55:04.040 Right. So he comes across. Well, people are not used to hearing from him. They've been

00:55:09.160 painted a picture that he's some, you know, he's that guy off Austin powers, Dr. Evil, Dr. Evil,

00:55:16.360 good name for, for that character. Yeah. You know, he's sitting there stroking some weird cat.

00:55:20.920 Yeah. He's not, he's, he's the leader of a country who has a strategic vision for his country. He's,

00:55:27.320 I don't agree with, with a lot of what he says or certainly with a lot of what he's done, but,

00:55:31.000 but that caricature is what he's up against. And it's very easy to look good against that

00:55:36.840 when you're given two hours to kind of lay out your argument. Right. So I think he's come,

00:55:41.000 come across well. Um, what was your first question? Uh, why do you think he's done that?

00:55:46.920 Why do you think he's agreed to this interview? So, but this is one of the things that I didn't

00:55:50.600 like about what Tucker did is Tucker tried to pretend that he's the only journalist that's basically

00:55:55.800 tried to get an interview with Putin. He said, I'm the only journalist that's bothered to

00:56:00.680 interview. And Putin's spokesman came out and said, this isn't true. We've been approached by

00:56:05.560 Western journalists all the time. Uh, and so have a lot of Western journalists. Now

00:56:10.360 those people haven't got those interviews. And I think that tells you a story. First of all,

00:56:16.040 uh, he knows who Tucker's audience are. Tucker has been cultivating this audience for a long time.

00:56:20.520 I can tell you as someone who's been on the show many times, or a couple of times rather,

00:56:23.880 sorry, as I can tell you someone who's been on the show a couple of times that

00:56:26.840 when I suggested to his producer that we should talk about this issue on which

00:56:31.720 I disagree with Tucker, they refused to do it. And I got a, when it came to talking about the stuff

00:56:37.960 that I normally talk about, which is, you know, woke culture, which we're equally concerned about

00:56:41.720 and whatever. Very happy to hear my thoughts. When he came to this very hostile immediately,

00:56:46.520 uh, and, uh, really didn't want to hear it. So it wasn't like we disagree. Let's have a conversation.

00:56:52.360 It was like, no, we're not talking about this. Um, so he knows who Tucker's audience are. Tucker's

00:56:58.920 audience are that section of the left and that section of the right that we've talked about before

00:57:03.640 who for their own reasons are, uh, either anti-American in principle, uh, like former

00:57:09.880 guest on the show, um, Aaron Matta, who said America's the, the, the death star, the death star.

00:57:15.080 Yeah. Uh, or the sections of the right who are so anti the establishment that they will side with

00:57:20.760 anyone who's anti their establishment, including enemies of America, like Vladimir Putin.

00:57:25.800 So he knew he was talking to a friendly audience who would lap it up. And if you open your Twitter

00:57:30.360 and look at all the right leaning and left leaning accounts from those sections,

00:57:34.200 they all lapped it up and they all spread it to their massive audience.

00:57:36.840 So do you think Putin saw it as basically a very powerful PR exercise?

00:57:42.600 Of course. What else is in it for him? You think he liked, it's not like he's a podcast guest.

00:57:47.960 He's not, not on the podcast circuit, is it? Maybe he should be, man.

00:57:52.120 Get a lot of views. Yeah, clearly. But you know, he's got a country to run. So he's not running

00:57:56.360 around doing podcasts to him. This was an opportunity to speak to the people in the West

00:58:00.280 who already agree with him. And he spoke to them.

00:58:03.160 Constantine, thank you very much. If you want to ask Constantine a question,

00:58:08.520 please send us a super chat and then we'll put your questions to Constantine after the break.

00:58:14.040 Thanks for watching. We'll be back in a couple of minutes. So this is from Claire. This is the

00:58:17.960 first question. This is from our local. This is from our local. First dibs because these are the

00:58:21.720 people that Francis, come on. Yes. Sell locals. Yes, of course. Sorry. Sorry. It's my left wing

00:58:26.840 nature. Yes. So we're giving first dibs to the people from our locals. They're basically our patron.

00:58:32.920 We're going to give them first dibs to ask Constantine questions because they're the ones who support us

00:58:38.200 financially. So Claire says, do the boys think Tucker's interview is going to have any bearing

00:58:45.560 on the direction of the war, i.e. will political leaders have to modify their plans in order to

00:58:51.320 placate the public? Well, one of the things that Putin did quite effectively there is he kept

00:58:56.520 presenting himself as this reasonable guy who's willing to negotiate. Now, you can tell what he's

00:59:00.680 really saying is, I'm in a position of strength. Tucker keeps saying to him, why don't you call the

00:59:05.320 American president and settle this? And he's saying, why would I call anyone? They should

00:59:08.760 call me. He's basically saying, I've got you by the balls and it's time if you want to negotiate,

00:59:15.240 I'm willing to hear it. And so I think that's another one of the reasons that he did this

00:59:20.520 interview. He's trying to present himself to the Western public in particular. You know,

00:59:24.360 there's no need for a war in Ukraine. Just come to the table and let's settle this. Yeah. It's very,

00:59:29.800 like I said, it was very interesting the way he chose to represent himself in a way that

00:59:34.920 actually took me by surprise. Should we do more locals? Yeah, we'll do more locals. Uh, so, um,

00:59:40.680 Jenny says, uh, thank you, Jenny. What is your opinion of Tucker now?

00:59:47.480 Look, Tucker is what Tucker is. I don't, I agree with him on a lot of things. I disagree with him

00:59:52.120 on some things, including this. Has my opinion of him changed based on this? Not particularly.

00:59:57.560 Fair. So, Mictrick asks, was Putin really describing the West's obsession with woke,

01:00:04.600 etc., in a derogatory manner? What are the chances he and others are behind that propaganda in the

01:00:11.480 first place? Um, I don't think he talked about that much in this interview. He keeps talking about

01:00:17.400 J.K. Rowling and trans and whatever, because he knows again that the Tucker audience will,

01:00:21.800 will be interested in that. Yeah. Um, but yeah, look, he's a leader of a, of a true country with

01:00:27.640 traditional values that's not pro-trans, believe it or not, uh, and sees a lot of what's happening

01:00:34.200 in the West as decadence, which by the way, so do I. Yes. Um, and so it's not like he's going to be a

01:00:39.480 fan of that, but I do think he's talking about it because it appeals to the people who he thinks are

01:00:43.880 listening. Interesting. Uh, can we scroll down please, Elliot, so we can get more of our locals?

01:00:48.840 Okay. Oh, this is very interesting. This is from Polysaturated and they ask,

01:00:54.200 who has a more believable story about the destruction of the Nord Stream pipeline?

01:00:59.400 I never bought the idea that Putin destroyed the Nord Stream pipeline. I thought that was idiotic.

01:01:05.960 Um, I look, I have no idea who destroyed it, but if I had to guess, I'd say it was the Americans.

01:01:11.560 Yeah. And I think that was pretty fair. That was what he said.

01:01:15.640 Yeah, pretty much. Yeah, exactly. Did he, did he mention the CIA again? He loves a bit of the CIA.

01:01:20.920 Well, like on some issues, he's got a point. Yeah.

01:01:24.360 In this instance in particular, I don't think Russia would blow up their own pipeline,

01:01:28.040 but they spent billions building. Yeah. So this is quite a provocative question.

01:01:32.120 Yeah. So, but I'm going to put it anyway. And this is from misanthropic.

01:01:35.080 Put any provocative question you want. Yeah.

01:01:37.160 Do you think part of the issue was that Tucker was woefully unprepared for what he was facing?

01:01:45.640 I don't know how prepared he was because you didn't ask that many questions.

01:01:49.720 He may have been very well prepared, but we don't know. Right. But as an interviewer,

01:01:56.680 you have to pick your spots. Yeah. We know this. People often criticize us for not asking enough

01:02:01.560 challenging questions or whatever. You've got to pick your spots. You can't interrupt somebody every three

01:02:05.320 seconds if you want to let them explain what they mean. So should he have gone in and started

01:02:11.560 debating the history of Russia? Maybe. Should he have gone in and started saying, well, actually,

01:02:17.880 you know, your rendering of the Polish situation in 1939 isn't, you know, you've got to pick your

01:02:23.560 spots. Yeah. So I don't know why he didn't challenge on certain things that I would have challenged on.

01:02:28.920 And maybe because he didn't know, or maybe because he chose not to, maybe because it's not his priority.

01:02:33.560 Maybe he sees himself as someone who's, this is one shot to bring peace to the world. And so he's,

01:02:39.720 he wants to focus on the negotiation instead of the historical argument. I don't know if he was

01:02:45.000 underprepared. I mean, there's also the other argument that he could say is that he came in,

01:02:49.240 he exposed Putin. We've now seen the flaws in his thinking, the conspiratorial nature. Isn't that part

01:02:56.440 of what an interview's role is? An interviewer's role is not just a challenge, not just a pushback,

01:03:02.120 but to expose the heart of the individual in front of you.

01:03:06.360 I don't know. I'm going to say, I'm going to do a Putin line here and say you'd have to ask Tucker.

01:03:11.320 Yeah. Tucker, we know you're watching, mate. Come on the show.

01:03:15.160 Sal says, is Putin's historical analysis, which presumably lays a foundation of his claim to

01:03:21.480 section of Ukraine going back to the ninth century, regardless of how much is debatable,

01:03:26.680 sincerely held, do you think? Well, I, I, I not only think it's sincerely held,

01:03:30.760 I do think it's accurate. The question is, do we want to renegotiate the borders of countries

01:03:35.400 endlessly on the basis of historical claims? My view, we don't.

01:03:39.160 Yeah. And I completely agree with you. Archduke Albino says, I love Constantine Kissinger. This is

01:03:45.320 a great question, actually. Gut reaction to Putin's use of language, his phrasing or cadence in those

01:03:51.000 moments when I think we can all agree he was visibly annoyed by Tucker's question or interjection,

01:03:57.800 specifically whether he was putting on a show or whether it indicates he was genuinely annoyed.

01:04:03.400 I didn't think he looked annoyed at all, to be honest. It was kind of his usual demeanor,

01:04:06.840 nothing different really. His huffing and puffing is just part of his persona. It's very typical,

01:04:12.280 typically Russian kind of like serious face. And then someone, you know, he didn't look annoyed

01:04:18.360 to me at all. He didn't, he didn't look in any way flustered or he didn't look under pressure at all.

01:04:23.240 Look, when Tucker started asking him about the journalist, I think he was starting to get

01:04:27.480 irritated by the same question being asked. But, but apart from that, I don't think so. Yeah.

01:04:32.920 Megan Mackenzie asked an absolute belter of a question. Well done, Megan. Thank you for sending

01:04:37.240 a super chat. What would the one question be that you would ask Putin?

01:04:42.680 Hmm. Well, we talked about one of them. You said there was a threat to Crimea. Yeah.

01:04:49.240 What did you mean in 2014? Yeah.

01:04:53.880 And the obvious question is, you know, what is the settlement that you would be prepared to accept

01:04:58.920 at this point? Yep. And that is both good questions. Marco says, is it me or was Putin found

01:05:07.640 lacking? Has he truly fallen so much to be reduced to this rambling, to lecture for hours without

01:05:15.640 substance? Was this all he ever was? I don't agree with the idea that he was rambling.

01:05:24.280 Western viewers are not used to his, the way he is. Yeah. So they, when they see a politician talking

01:05:32.280 for two hours, they, about history, they automatically assume he's rambling. Whereas he sees himself as this,

01:05:38.040 you know, polymath. He's educating you about the history of Russia and whatever. Uh, so I don't

01:05:44.200 think he's rambling. I just think he, he's used to having, as I said, right at the beginning, you know,

01:05:48.840 three hours to lay out his case. Um, very good. So, uh, BJ Allen asks from locals, why now I,

01:05:57.720 why haven't we had an interview like this before now? So why at this particular moment do you think?

01:06:05.080 I honestly don't know. I don't know whether Fox News would let Tucker interview, uh,

01:06:10.120 uh, Vladimir Putin. Uh, I don't think this interview was anything crazy, but you know,

01:06:15.400 I think it's fair to say that since he's left Fox, he's loosened the, the boundaries of the sort

01:06:21.640 of people that he interviews. Uh, so maybe that's why it hasn't happened. I don't, I don't know.

01:06:25.720 No, genuinely. Okay. Uh, met. So, uh, we've got a few ones. Uh, we've got one about aliens. Why

01:06:33.400 didn't Tucker ask Putin about aliens? I mean, I don't think that would have been, uh, because

01:06:39.160 obviously Tucker is big into that. Uh, we will have a look. I bet Joe would have asked him about

01:06:44.200 it. Oh yeah. Yeah, absolutely. They would have got the cigars out. It would have been really good.

01:06:48.040 It would have been a lot of fun. Um, so let's see if we've got, uh, there was one about,

01:06:55.400 uh, the coup that kept coming up. Have you got that one? Yeah. No,

01:06:57.880 I haven't seen that now. Okay. Let's do, uh, this is a good question. Eliza Wright now says,

01:07:03.000 can Putin be considered a good leader in terms of being Russia first as parallel to America first?

01:07:09.400 Um, well, it depends on what, look, uh, Putin has overseen a period of extraordinary growth for

01:07:18.520 Russia. Is it all he's doing? No, mainly it's a product of the fact that oil prices went up and

01:07:23.880 there was a huge economic boon. He didn't particularly take that, uh, money and rebuild Russia into a

01:07:32.760 powerful manufacturing base or whatever. It's just basically a big petrol station, a big oil pump,

01:07:38.680 whatever you want to call it. Um, does he put the interest of his country first? Yeah. Does

01:07:43.480 he want to make it strong? Yeah. Um, have all the decisions that he made been in Russia's best

01:07:50.040 interest? No, but then that's probably true of a lot of leaders. Um, do I think his decision to

01:07:55.000 invade Ukraine was a long-term benefit to Russia? I guess we don't know. Yeah. It's the truth.

01:08:00.600 Genuinely. Yeah. We genuinely don't know. I mean, you know, hundreds of thousands of Russian

01:08:05.240 people have died and Ukrainians have died and it's caused all sorts of trouble in the world.

01:08:10.360 Whether that benefits Russia in the long term, we just genuinely don't know. No, absolutely. And we're,

01:08:15.960 no one does. And we will see what happens as we move, as we move on. Finally Triggered on Locals says,

01:08:22.120 and by the way, if you haven't joined Locals, you absolutely should. You get to ask our guests

01:08:25.960 questions. You get extra content. You get to behind the scenes. It's fantastic. The, uh,

01:08:32.120 finally Triggered says, at one point, Putin seemed to make the distinction between the practical West

01:08:37.160 and cerebral intellectual Russia. Fascinating. Why does he think like this? Oh, all Russians think

01:08:45.240 like this. Basically what he was saying, uh, politely is what most Russians think impolitely,

01:08:52.040 which is Westerners are shallow and consumerist and Russians are deep and meaningful people with,

01:08:57.240 you know, real kind of, you know, seriousness. And they don't care about material possessions and

01:09:03.560 that's why there's such a strong patriotic spirit in Russia, as you said. Some truth to that, by the

01:09:08.120 way. Yeah, oh yeah, absolutely. But the fact, the idea that, you know, Russians aren't consumerists,

01:09:13.000 having seen Russians on Bond Street coming out of, you know, the most- You've got to remember that

01:09:18.280 is a particular sliver of Russian society. Yeah, absolutely. Like if you go to Brighton on a Saturday

01:09:23.000 night, that's not necessarily representative of all people in Britain. Well, it's my people, mate.

01:09:27.640 Um, so, uh, Scott on Locals says, what is, uh, KK's response to the comments about the impact of BRICS

01:09:34.760 and US influence in world politics? I don't remember exactly what he said on that, other than that it's

01:09:41.560 growing and can be- I think we kind of addressed it in the main interview. Yeah. Okay. Glenn Schumann

01:09:46.200 asked a historical question, uh, by sending in a super chat. There was also no discussion,

01:09:50.040 Russian, the Holodomor. Not to justify this, but could this have been part of the motivation

01:09:54.680 for Ukrainians becoming Nazi during World War II? Well, of course it was. Of course it was.

01:09:59.320 The reason that a lot of these people, uh, thought Hitler was a liberator is the experience

01:10:05.080 they had from the Soviets was, believe it or not, Francis, worse than what Ukraine experienced

01:10:13.000 under Hitler. Yeah. So, under German Nazi occupation, somewhere around 4.6 million people were killed

01:10:19.800 in Ukraine. Wow. Seven million people starved in a Holodomor. Yeah. Only years prior. So, if you've

01:10:28.040 just seen your country, in their opinion, deliberately starved to the point where people were eating

01:10:32.680 their own children. Yeah. How are you going to feel about the regime that caused that? And so, the people

01:10:40.760 who were- now look, I say again, some of the people who collaborated with the Nazis were fascists,

01:10:47.000 they were anti-Semitic, they hated Jews, they were happy to kill Jews and Poles and Russians,

01:10:51.640 but a lot of the people, they were stuck between these two terrible dictators, murderous dictators,

01:10:57.080 and they thought- they didn't know about the Holocaust at the time, a lot of them, because the Holocaust

01:11:01.240 hadn't happened yet. And so, they just saw this as, well, maybe these guys will be better than these

01:11:07.720 evil guys. Maybe these guys will be three percent better. Yeah. At least we won't be starving to death.

01:11:12.920 But I say again, there were also some fascists who were murderous, anti-Semitic, and evil.

01:11:17.720 Yeah. And people use history as a way to justify their own worldview, and also their own actions.

01:11:24.600 And you can- that's the thing about history. And it's not just the Holodomor, by the way,

01:11:27.720 it's collectivization, where essentially all the peasants had their property taken away.

01:11:31.560 It's the purges in the 19th, in the end of the 1930s. It's basically, the Soviets brutalized the

01:11:37.720 entire country for 20 years. It's no surprise that quite a lot of people at the end of that

01:11:41.720 didn't want to support that regime, didn't want to fight. It's one of the reasons

01:11:45.240 the Soviet armies got so badly decimated in the first year and a half of the war,

01:11:50.200 because they didn't want to fight for Stalin, quite understandably so.

01:11:54.280 And that's why Germans- the number of prisoners- Germans took so many prisoners,

01:11:59.400 they literally didn't have enough German soldiers to convoy them to the camps.

01:12:03.160 Yeah. Why are you going to fight for someone who more than likely has either imprisoned your

01:12:08.600 family member or killed one? Or made you starve or your family starve.

01:12:12.040 Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Okay. Another- this is a provocative one. But,

01:12:19.000 has Zelensky failed Ukraine? Uh, huge deaths for the dream of NATO-EU membership when he could

01:12:24.600 have courted the Russians- the Russian-leaning Ukrainians and worked with Russia and the EU?

01:12:29.400 I don't know the answer to that question. Nobody does. Nobody knows what the alternative would have

01:12:35.640 been. Um, I don't know that it was possible for him to do that because he was elected on a strong

01:12:41.480 pro-Western position. Yeah. So, if he hadn't pursued that, he wouldn't have been doing what he was elected

01:12:49.960 to do. Yeah. Um, and also, you know, it lays the blame for everything that happened entirely on him,

01:12:56.360 which I don't think is reasonable given that it's Vladimir Putin who invaded.

01:12:59.720 And it's very easy for people to sit in the comfort of their own home. Yeah.

01:13:03.640 When somebody is a leader of a nation at war. Yeah. I imagine that's quite stressful.

01:13:09.960 You know, there's a bit of pressure on your- on your shoulders. Yeah.

01:13:12.280 Um, Aberos Muchos says, uh, who will Putin- and we talked about this with Mark Gagliotti and- but,

01:13:18.680 I'll- I'll- I'll put it to you because it's a good question. Who will Putin choose as his successor

01:13:23.560 if the time has come? How come that no one has asked him this yet? Well, we asked a historian

01:13:29.240 called Mark Gagliotti this very question and, uh, watch our interview and find out. Yeah, absolutely.

01:13:33.880 It's a great interview as well. Mark is a splendid man. Uh, on Locals, Krill Tarrant says,

01:13:39.320 does Putin use Tucker Carlson as a useful idiot? And what would you say to someone who claims that

01:13:45.240 what Tucker did is real journalism? Well, we- we opened the whole interview talking about this.

01:13:51.480 I think that's really- the real journalism point is up for debate. Um,

01:13:57.640 Putin is definitely using Tucker. It doesn't mean Tucker isn't using Putin. They're using

01:14:02.360 each other. Oh, absolutely. Which is what all interviews kind of are. Yeah. In some way.

01:14:06.600 Not this one, mate. This is just love. Um- Stay away from me.

01:14:10.120 Yeah. Paul says, uh, you mentioned earlier about unilateral power, China and Russia coming, uh,

01:14:16.120 China and Russia coming, uh, uh, rising in dominance and the West declining. What would

01:14:22.760 that world look like with a dominant Russia or China? I always say the same thing to people. Look at

01:14:28.600 Mexico. Look what happens when you take out one cartel. Yeah. What happens? It's not good. And then

01:14:37.560 another cartel becomes a dominant cartel. Yeah. Or what's possibly even worse is that you've got

01:14:44.520 multiple dominant cartels. Well, that comes first and eventually after brutal war, after brutal war,

01:14:49.640 after brutal war, another dominant cartel emerges. Yeah. So the, you know, is Chinese rule of the

01:14:56.680 world going to be better than American? I don't think so. No. Not for us. No. I'm not

01:15:03.560 fucking learning Chinese, mate. No. No. Food's good. Uh, O Bender, his name. I'm not saying those words,

01:15:11.160 although someone will probably clip me. Uh, can the lads discuss likelihood of Putin being a

01:15:15.800 pathological liar and him being able to pass the polygraph test with flying colours? There is no

01:15:22.040 such thing as an ex-KGB operative. Well, there's a famous line from a KGB agent who was asked, how do you

01:15:27.880 pass a lie detection test? And he said, get a good night's sleep and tell the truth. And that's

01:15:32.680 because if you're, the polygraph test is complete bullshit, by the way, you know this, right? Yeah.

01:15:37.800 Yeah. I remember you saying. It only measures your nervousness level. So if you're not nervous when

01:15:41.400 you're lying, which it's very easy to not be nervous if you're lying, if you've been trained to do this,

01:15:46.600 like a KGB agent might be, um, or will be, then it's not very hard. Um, uh, I don't think Putin is a

01:15:54.360 pathological lie. I think Putin, uh, sees the truth as, um, a tool to be used for his ends.

01:16:02.200 In other words, how do I use the truth to tell the story that I want to tell? And how do I not

01:16:06.680 tell the part of the story that I don't want people to hear? Yeah. And he's very calm about

01:16:10.760 that because in his mind, the rationale will be, I'm doing this for the greatness of Russia.

01:16:16.440 Yeah. And he, he's lied over and over. By the way, I gave the example of him saying,

01:16:21.320 Russian troops are not in Crimea. Then, you know, a month later, oh yeah, it was Russian troops.

01:16:26.120 And, and like, you can Google it. There's, there's hours of evidence of him saying one thing

01:16:31.400 that he then contradicts or saying something that then turns out completely false. And he knew it at

01:16:37.000 the time. Yeah. By the way, well, a lot of Western leaders lie a lot too. I mean, that's what politicians

01:16:42.680 do. Putin is at the end of the day, a politician. Absolutely. Uh, and a white man. So terrible man. Uh,

01:16:48.840 left leaning says, is he going to nuke us? No. Yeah, I think, uh, I, I, I really dislike this idea

01:16:59.080 that, you know, he's mad or insane and he's got his finger hovering over the button. I think it actually

01:17:05.160 is, it means him. Well, one of the things that, um, he tried to say, it was like, oh,

01:17:11.160 the Western elites are scaring their populations by saying, you know, Russia is threatening to use, uh,

01:17:16.360 tactical nuclear weapons. It wasn't the Western elites that said that he was openly nuclear doing

01:17:22.680 open nuclear saber rattling during this conflict from the beginning. Oh really? Yeah. Yeah. So we

01:17:28.680 are prepared to use any means necessary. And just kept saying this over and over, moved nuclear weapons

01:17:34.120 to Belarus, uh, left the treaty or suspended Russia's participation in, in one of the treaties.

01:17:40.680 So, uh, he's been nuclear saber rattling himself, but I don't think there's absolutely, there's no

01:17:46.280 intention of doing that. No, those are, those are, not least because he feels very comfortable with

01:17:51.880 where he is in Ukraine now. Yeah. And also as well, the moment you do that, you open the proverbial

01:17:58.680 Pandora's box and you do not know what is going to be unleashed. And the chances are it's not going

01:18:03.160 to end well for you. Yeah. And he wants to live. Yeah. Look how far away he used to sit during

01:18:07.240 COVID from people. Well, he knew about social distancing before all of us, mate. Yeah. Anyway,

01:18:12.520 so, uh, so this is from George, uh, uh, Nizharadze. If I haven't pronounced it, George,

01:18:19.240 it's your fault, not mine. Should have had a simpler name. Uh, he says, uh, KK, you mentioned at the

01:18:24.280 beginning that Ukraine is indeed an artificial country. Do you think Ukrainian culture, identity,

01:18:30.120 and language are artificial? No, they're not artificial, but the Ukraine as a country is

01:18:38.280 made up of pieces of other countries and was created quite recently. That's a fact. Yeah.

01:18:42.280 It doesn't mean that, well, I have family who are Ukrainian. It doesn't mean I think their language

01:18:46.920 or the culture or whatever is artificial, uh, but the country territorially is, but so are a lot of

01:18:54.360 countries. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I was going to say Belgium, but that is definitely a fake country.

01:18:59.080 Yeah, it is. It's not a proper country. Not a serious country. We're joking. Yeah.

01:19:02.440 There are a lot of countries that are formed in this way. Doesn't mean that other countries are

01:19:07.400 entitled to invade them. No, absolutely. And you know, the term artificial is quite, is quite loaded

01:19:13.320 because you go, you know, what country isn't artificial in many ways? There are some. Yeah. There

01:19:18.760 are some. There are some countries that are just pure nation states, have been, always are,

01:19:22.360 have been, and will remain that way. Um, but there are some countries that are not. Yeah. And it doesn't

01:19:28.200 mean that they're any more valued or have any more, any, uh, less right to exist in other ones.

01:19:32.840 So we've got one, we've got a question from locals. It's Pauline Marsh. It's quite literally being

01:19:38.280 typed up now. I can hear Jack's fingers or Elliot's fingers moving furiously as it's coming up on the

01:19:44.120 screen. Uh, he says, looking forward to your take KK as you have firsthand experience of the culture.

01:19:51.400 So thank you very much. We've had loads of, loads of supportive messages, by the way. Um,

01:19:55.880 to me, Putin comes across as far more pragmatic than most Western leaders. Am I getting sucked in?

01:20:06.040 Um, no, what's happening is you're misreading. Putin doesn't have to have popular support.

01:20:12.840 So he doesn't have to sell his views to the public. Therefore he doesn't have to virtue

01:20:19.160 signal. Therefore he can say what he wants in a way that a normal Western leader can't.

01:20:24.360 Yeah. He doesn't have to virtue signal. That's what's happening.

01:20:27.000 Yeah. And he doesn't have to pander and he doesn't, because he's not worried about opinion polls. He's

01:20:32.280 not worried about getting reelected. Yeah. Yeah. He can just shoot from the hip. Yeah. In a way that

01:20:38.040 our leaders can't. Um, Gary says, uh, what do you guys think of Boris Johnson literally

01:20:44.520 intervening to prolong a war that could have been halted? Well, we've already talked about this.

01:20:49.320 Yeah. We have talked about it. So go back early in the interview. We discussed all this.

01:20:52.840 Uh, so BJ Allen says, why now? What happened? So we've, we've already come across that. Have

01:20:57.720 we got any other questions, boys? Or is that pretty much it? We've got a couple more coming.

01:21:01.960 What about the super chats? Is there one of those? No, there's no. There was definitely one. I saw one about

01:21:06.520 somebody trying to challenge me, which I wanted to pick up on, which was about,

01:21:10.760 uh, we've got 50 quid from Ogrods, for example, that I can see. Can you see that one? No, I can't.

01:21:18.520 If Hitler was similarly interviewed, one might have concluded legitimacy with some of his positions,

01:21:23.320 but clearly evil was able to manifest through that godless man. The key question to Putin was whether

01:21:28.280 he recognized higher forces at work. He didn't. Yeah. I guess that's not a question. Yeah. Thank you for

01:21:34.520 that Ogrods. Um, I'm sorry if we've missed a bunch of super chats. There is a lot, there are a lot of

01:21:39.160 messages coming in, so we haven't been able to pick all of them up for sure. Uh, we've got a couple of,

01:21:45.400 Paul Cherry says, how do we stop the decline of the West and stop the rise of China and Russia? Well,

01:21:50.440 we've been talking about this for quite a long time. The West needs to rediscover its

01:21:53.560 self-confidence and stop being divided. Ahem. Jez Chicken has a question. I don't know. Maybe,

01:22:00.200 I don't, uh, maybe you'll be able to answer it. Will there be advice on extracting yourself from a deep

01:22:07.000 coma? Is that? No. Okay. Uh, Int Boom says Putin uses a land claim from the year 800 to justify his

01:22:15.560 invasion of Ukraine. Does this mean that any progressives who think this makes no sense should

01:22:20.040 stop using the history of slavery as a tactic? They should stop using the history of slavery

01:22:24.440 as a tactic because their interpretation of the history of slavery is moronic. Uh,

01:22:28.280 that's why they should stop using it. So James Burlow says, uh, here in America,

01:22:34.280 so no, it says the words, uh, you know, and I think this is, you know, let's put it, uh, kindly. It's a

01:22:40.680 less mainstream narrative. James Burlow says, no, here in America, Washington DC has been hostile

01:22:46.040 and determined to keep Russia crippled and prevent Germany from becoming truly independent.

01:22:51.240 That's probably a good idea. Uh, Eric, by the way, says, please don't use business inside as a

01:22:56.360 credible source, which is why, Elliot, I put in a link to Naftali Bennett's own Twitter in which

01:23:01.960 he dismisses the claims that are being made about what he said. Can we pull that up? Because I knew

01:23:05.640 somebody would say this. Yeah. So, uh, Mycroft says, uh, Trigonometry, please check diesel baby

01:23:11.880 super chat. That's the one with the challenge. Yeah. That's the one I was, uh, alluding to. Uh,

01:23:17.640 diesel baby. If you put it back in, I'll read it out. I'm sorry. We've been able to miss it. I really

01:23:21.720 wanted to get to it because I wanted to talk about the stuff that people wanted to challenge me on

01:23:26.760 because that's really important. Yeah. Okay. Uh, so guys, uh, we've got the Eugene, uh, he says,

01:23:32.120 how do you feel about Putin use? If you can bring that up for me, then I can, uh, I can ask Konstantin.

01:23:38.680 Uh, Kefala says, this feels like a coded message. We're ready to talk. Well,

01:23:43.240 that's what he was saying. Yeah. We're in a very strong position and we're ready to talk.

01:23:47.160 Uh, okay. So, um, Eugene, can you just clarify the last, uh, word please, gentlemen,

01:23:53.320 because it doesn't make sense. Thank you. So, uh, how do you feel, and this is from Eugene Geis,

01:23:58.280 I think it is. How do you feel about Putin using the phrase, a job is a job when referring to the CIA's

01:24:06.520 choice of it, of Russia as an opponent and thus supporting the Ukrainian maiden coup, maiden coup?

01:24:13.080 Well, what he's saying is I'm a KGB agent. I can't exactly slag off the CIA for doing their job.

01:24:18.280 Yeah. Uh, Justin says, KK is so desperate to both sides of this interview.

01:24:24.360 It's almost like you're trying to be nuanced, mate, or you are nuanced.

01:24:26.920 To tell the truth. Yeah. Yeah. So there we go.

01:24:29.400 I'm sorry we didn't pander to your particular predilections, Justin. We will try better next

01:24:34.520 time. No, we won't. Yeah. Uh, in bloom says, uh, Putin uses a land claim from the year 800 to just,

01:24:41.320 Yeah, we've done that one. Oh, we've done that one. Uh, okay. I think that's pretty much it.

01:24:45.880 No, we do have that question that I, I'm desperate to get to from a guy who sent the super chat in about

01:24:51.720 four times. I don't want to let go of that. Yeah. And also, Megan McKenzie has sent one.

01:24:54.920 Oh, is it, is, is it why you claiming Maidan was a bunch of students? Is this one? Right. Okay.

01:24:59.080 We've got it. Diesel Baby says, why are you claiming Maidan was a bunch of students and ignoring

01:25:04.600 downplaying role of far right paramilitary groups like right sector? Tons of RS flags in

01:25:11.560 crowd during John McCain's speech. It's on video. So you misinterpreted what I said, uh, Diesel. Uh,

01:25:17.560 what I said is the reason Maidan started was the students who were protesting. Once they were beaten up,

01:25:24.600 tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of people went out into the street. I have friends

01:25:29.800 who were on the streets of Kyiv during that period of time who were not right wing or far right or

01:25:35.080 anything of the kind. They were just decent Ukrainian people who objected to the way their students were

01:25:38.840 treated. And as in any protest, you're going to get some people who are, uh, you know, it's like this

01:25:45.640 thing with Kelly J. Keene, the guy turns up to her event and he's a, he's some kind of Nazi or whatever.

01:25:51.720 And suddenly everyone's a Nazi. There was an, uh, an element of the far right there. Yeah.

01:25:55.480 Uh, if there was a pro, if there was a revolution against the Rishi Sunni government, I bet there'd

01:25:59.560 be some far right protesters there too. So, uh, you know, uh, January of the 6th, were there some

01:26:05.160 far right people there? I'm pretty sure they would have been. Yeah. You know, this is kind of what

01:26:08.920 happens. Absolutely. Megan says, uh, what do you think the results of the Canadian government

01:26:13.880 inviting a Nazi into parliament were for Putin, Zelensky and the West? Well, right. This is one thing we

01:26:18.360 didn't talk about. Putin kept presenting this as like Ukraine is this. Zelensky didn't know this

01:26:24.120 guy was a former Nazi. Yeah. Neither did the people in the Canadian parliament. It's just what happened

01:26:30.200 was, uh, as we've talked about before, the West went into this moronic virtue signaling phase that

01:26:37.560 they were just so desperate to be anti-Russian everywhere. They did lots of stupid stuff.

01:26:41.400 Yeah. And so, yeah, as big, and they weren't thinking, you know, strategically, et cetera,

01:26:47.960 et cetera. In Bloom says, thank you, Constantine. It's surprising to me how few otherwise smart

01:26:53.720 Westerners understand how Russians think. You're the best. And I, thank you. Um, yeah,

01:27:00.280 my voice is gone, mate. Yeah. A lot of people are now commenting on my voice. A lot of people

01:27:04.600 commenting on your voice. Sound sexy and husky. Sexy and husky. Right. Francis is now attracted to me.

01:27:10.120 Yeah, exactly. Stay tuned. This will be on Locals. No. So let's wind up with this.

01:27:15.880 The difference between the way Russians think and the way the Brits think, because I don't think

01:27:20.120 people understand this enough. And I think it really helps to clarify Putin's character and the

01:27:26.520 way he's behaving. Since we have like 10,000 people watching live, rather than giving you my take,

01:27:32.840 I'll actually refer people to a talk by a former guest of ours, who is the first guest of ours who's

01:27:40.760 passed away. Oh, yeah. Marty Carey. Yeah. Bless him. Absolutely. And he gave an incredible talk. It's

01:27:48.120 in Finnish, but there are subtitles and there's also a voice of a version. I wish I could remember the

01:27:55.080 exact title, but it's something like Finnish intelligence colonel explains why Russians

01:28:00.040 think the way they think or something like that. And it's the best explanation of how Russians think

01:28:05.640 and how it's different to the way people in other parts of the world think that I've ever heard.

01:28:10.360 Literally like 99.99% of what he says, in my opinion, is exactly true. I really recommend people check it

01:28:17.720 out. Absolutely. And Marty was also on the show and gave a brilliant interview as well. And he also

01:28:22.680 provided some insight there. Yeah. Thank you so much for watching. Thank you so much for commenting.

01:28:27.880 Thank you so much for sending super chats. Thank you to everybody on Locals who are supporting us

01:28:32.440 and put forward your questions. And we'll see you very soon with another fabulous interview. Take care

01:28:38.200 and see you soon.

TRIGGERnometry - February 09, 2024

Putin Vs. Tucker： Konstantin Kisin Reaction

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