Tucker Carlson says he will interview Russian president Vladimir Putin ‘soon’

Former Fox News host Tucker Carlson is in Moscow to interview Russian President Vladimir Putin, he said in a clip posted to social media platform X.

Mr Carlson, who was sacked by Fox News last year, said he was doing the interview because “Americans have a right to know all they can about a war they are implicated in”.

The former host has been a consistent critic of US aid to Ukraine, and previously used his Fox News show to voice hardline anti-immigration positions and to defend authoritarian leaders such as Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban.

In his clip on Tuesday he did not give a time frame for when the interview would air, but just said it would be “soon”.

He described the war in Ukraine as a “human disaster” that altered longstanding political and trade realties throughout the world and there had been wide exposure to the views expressed by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

“Most Americans have no idea why Putin invaded Ukraine or what his goals are now,” he said. “We are not here because we love Vladimir Putin … We are not encouraging you to agree with what Putin may say in this interview, but we are urging you to watch it. You should know as much as you can.”

He said he was conducting the interview because it was his “job” as a journalist.

Veteran journalist and CNN anchor Christiane Amanpour wrote on X: “Does Tucker really think we journalists haven’t been trying to interview President Putin every day since his full scale invasion of Ukraine? It’s absurd — we’ll continue to ask for an interview, just as we have for years now.”

The BBC’s Russia editor Steve Rosenberg also tweeted: “Interesting to hear @TuckerCarlson claim that ‘no western journalist has bothered to interview’ Putin since the invasion of Ukraine. We’ve lodged several requests with the Kremlin in the last 18 months. Always a ‘no’ for us.”

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov declined on Tuesday to comment on whether there was a forthcoming interview or if Carlson had visited the Russian presidential administration, the Reuters news agency reported.

Carlson said he had also requested an interview with Zelensky.

“We hope he accepts,” Carlson said.

“But the interviews he’s already done in the United States are not traditional interviews. They are fawning pep sessions specifically designed to amplify Zelensky’s demand that the US enter more deeply into a war in Eastern Europe and pay for it. That is not journalism. It is government propaganda, propaganda of the ugliest kind, the kind that kills people,” he claimed.