What Putin Wants to Get Out of Tucker Carlson

Vladimir Putin doesn’t give many interviews to Westerners. So when Tucker Carlson airs his sit-down on Thursday, it will mark one of the first times in years that the Russian president held a one-on-one interview with a Western journalist — though there’s debate if Carlson counts as one.

One journalist who did gain this kind of access to Putin was Lionel Barber, the editor of the Financial Times until 2020. Barber, together with a Moscow-based colleague, spent more than an hour and a half interviewing Putin in the Kremlin in July 2019. He recalls quite an experience, being kept waiting for hours until nearly midnight while aides played mind games to unnerve him.

Barber’s interview broke new ground, eliciting answers from Putin that revealed how his worldview was changing, and how his hostility to the West was growing. It remains to be seen whether Carlson does something similar — uses the interview the way a journalist would, to draw out new information — or whether he and Putin are both seeking to promote a similar political agenda.

Barber says that he’ll be watching Carlson as closely as he’ll be watching Putin, a figure he describes as “a very icy character.”

“I’m going to judge him first by the quality of the questions and whether his questions give the game away, show that he’s on Putin’s side,” Barber said. “If they’re just softball or cream puff questions, then it’s just a piece of propaganda and he’s just acting as Putin's mouthpiece and puppet.”

The following has been edited for length and clarity.

Russian leaders do not give one-on-one interviews to Westerners very often, and when they do, they usually have an ulterior motive. What do you think is Putin's motivation for talking to Carlson now? Is it that Putin wants to talk, or does he specifically want to talk to Carlson?

First, he knows he's got a sympathetic ear. Carlson is a journalist of sorts, but he's also a propagandist. He's a sympathizer with the Russian version of why they invaded Ukraine. Tucker is no friend at all of [Ukrainian President Volodymyr] Zelenskyy. He talked in his opening remarks about Zelenskyy being treated like a “consumer brand” in American media, which was frankly insulting. So we know where Carlson's coming from. He's not going to have a hostile interview, number one.

Number two, if you think about the timing, the military aid package in Washington is up for grabs; it's being held hostage by a small number of Republicans, MAGA Republicans, Trumpists. This is a moment that Putin has calculated that he can use this interview to appeal to that audience. And lastly, to appeal to a Western audience, some of whom will be definitely ignorant about the history and the complexity surrounding this conflict.

So you think that one of Putin's motivations is to put a nail in the coffin of the Ukraine aid package that's currently being considered in the U.S. Congress and also potentially to reach the audience of Americans who just aren't sure how much the United States should be supporting Ukraine at this point?

I don't know whether he could put a nail in the coffin. What he will want to do is something slightly more insidious, which is to weaken Western resolve, to give the impression that he's a reasonable person, and why don't we just forget that this is a brutal conflict where he's the aggressor. That there's a deal to be made and he's a reasonable person. He wants to appeal to that sort of person to undermine Western resolve and unity. That's really what he wants to do, and as a byproduct of that, maybe to kill this aid package.

Tell me about how your interview with Putin came about. Had the Financial Times been seeking it? Did the Kremlin approach you?

We had asked for an interview in the early 2010s. I'd actually been to a dinner with some business people — a couple of oil people, a couple of academics, the editor of The Economist — in a dinner with Putin at the Russian Embassy in London. This was before the [2014] Crimean invasion, annexation. So I thought at that time, well, it'd be nice to try and get an interview. I was looking to do regular interviews with world leaders and Putin was on the list. But after Crimea, I thought, I don't want to go there. Because there's international sanctions, it just sends the wrong message. So we waited and then we kind of made another effort around 2017 or 2018. It took a couple of years. And then a new correspondent for the FT came into Moscow and we thought this was an opening and we kind of appealed to his vanity: “There’s a G-20 summit in Japan in Osaka. This is your moment to come out on the world stage.” We made the point that he'd been in power for 20 years and he would be the most experienced leader there, so here's a chance to talk to the FT, talk to a global audience.

And so they finally said yes.

Did they put any conditions on the interview?

No, I don't do conditions.

Where was it done? Were there other people in the room?

We knew it was a nighttime interview. We knew Putin was going to make us wait at least four hours. It turned out to be just over that. And it went on well past midnight. During the day we would just have to wait. And then we were summoned to the Kremlin at around quarter past seven.

We were then taken into the Cabinet Room, the famous one with the longest table in the eastern world, but it wasn't Covid yet so we had a small roundish table. Quite a small one. And then we just kept standing for hours. There was all sorts of mind games going on because they put chairs down and I thought, well this is good because I've been standing talking to these flunkies for an hour. But as I moved towards the chairs to sit down, the security guards sat on the chairs instead. So there was all this going on. And then we went in to have some tea and I kept thinking, this could be the polonium tea. You know, you didn't want to drink anything because what was going to be in the drink? There were all sorts of mind games. And then finally I was thinking, well, it's four hours now, and 20 to midnight. We were then taken back into the Cabinet Room, and all the cameras were set up and Putin comes in.

As you know, he's much shorter than he appears. He's actually maybe 5 feet five or so. And [Dmitry] Peskov, the longtime Kremlin spokesman, was in the background, and then myself and Henry. And then I said to Henry, you know, we've waited four-plus hours. I'm going to speak German to him to just remind him that I know that he was a KGB agent in Dresden. And, of course, he then spoke back in German. I said in German, thank you very much for seeing us, it's been some time since I last saw you. And he then said, thank you, and where did you learn your German? And I said Oxford, but I didn't just learn German, I did German Modern History. And then he said, in German, what is modern history? It was just like being hit by a sledgehammer. What do I say? He's the master of destabilization, you've got to be always on your toes. So my brain froze, and then I suddenly said, in German, well, Mr. President, modern history is everything that happened after 1989 [when the Berlin Wall fell]. And he liked that answer, and then he said, okay, sit down.

I prepared seriously for this. I was determined that the interview would last longer than an hour. It ended up lasting about an hour and 40 minutes. And I remember after about 80 minutes, he started grumbling and saying, this was taking rather long. And I said, Mr. President, I waited five years for this, we do need to go on a bit.

One person I spoke to before the interview was Bill Burns, then the longtime U.S. ambassador in Moscow. He met Putin numerous times and is now chief of the CIA. And I asked him about how I should approach Putin. Also Bob Zoellick, former deputy Secretary of State, he knew Putin very well and both of them said, don't antagonize him at the beginning. Treat him with respect. And that was good advice. It's not about being soft but if you want to have a chance of learning something, you're not going to go for cheap shots or aggression at the beginning. So that was good advice.

Carlson's critics see him as more of a propagandist or a demagogue than a journalist. So, does that mean that his approach to this interview is going to be different than yours? And what will you be looking for, to try to judge what Carlson's objectives are in this interview?

I'm going to judge him first by the quality of the questions and whether his questions give the game away, show that he's on Putin’s side. If they’re just softball or cream puff questions, then it's just a piece of propaganda and he's just acting as Putin's mouthpiece and puppet.

The other point is, is he going to ask at least a couple of questions that are going to make Putin uncomfortable? And I would say that he has to. If he's a journalist, a proper journalist would ask about the detention of Evan Gershkovich, the Moscow correspondent who's in jail on trumped up spying charges. If he doesn't even mention Gershkovich, that's appalling. Gershkovich isn't a political opponent of the regime. He's a journalist. He's an American journalist.

So if Carlson is really there as a journalist, he will ask about the fate of another journalist?

That's the litmus test for the integrity of this interview. Does he mention Gershkovich being in detention? Or is he going to be a bit of a toadying interviewer? I mean, you can be polite but not overly polite. Will he be slightly detached? Does he elicit any information from Putin that is surprising? Or is it just meh, it’s just what we all know, no different from what Putin has said before? This is the test for the interviewer — are you actually eliciting information as opposed to propaganda?

How much was Russia's revanchist version of history an element in your interview with Putin and how do you think he has evolved in the subsequent four years?

There were at least three very important things that came out in our interview. The first was — and I should give Bill Burns the credit for this because I asked, what's the one question you would ask Putin? And he said, ask him, “After 20 years, has your risk appetite gone up or down based on your experience?” It’s a brilliant question. At first Putin tried to duck it and then I pushed him. And then he said, well, we have a saying in Russia, “Those who don't take the risk, don't get to drink the champagne.” Well, that was clear. His risk appetite had gone up.

The second question was about populism. We've seen populism in America with Trump, Spain, Germany, France, Italy. When's it coming to Russia? And he really didn't like that question. And then he came up with what turned out to be the big story for us, which was, the liberal idea is obsolete. You guys are decadent, soft. You don't know anything and you know, you teach gender fluidity in schools. I mean, it was unbelievable. And that was the story because it just told you that he thought the West was for the taking, that it was decadent, decrepit, and he was on the right side of history.

The third point was when I asked him about the fall of the Soviet Union, and he reiterated what he said about it being a tragedy because of millions of displaced Russians, and you could get a sense then of the grievance culture and mentality. Less than three years later, he went and invaded Ukraine.

Clearly things went on another leg during Covid when he produced that long essay about the old Russian Empire. I think he got more of a philosophical historical underpinning by talking to [Russian ideologue Aleksandr] Dugin and others for talking about Greater Russia and the reconstitution of a Greater Russia.

So will that be another thing to watch for in the Carlson interview, whether he simply allows Putin to give this new version of history in which Russia is a Great Power and the West is decadent, or whether he challenges him the way you did and points out that the invasion of Ukraine was unprovoked?

I would be watching to see whether he can get Putin to say directly, “Ukraine isn't a country. It doesn't have the status of an independent state. It's really part of Russia.” And then I would wait to see, does he follow up and say, does that mean that there are other parts of Europe which don't really belong as independent states? I asked him about this in 2013, and I saw his face turned to ice. By the way, up close and personal, Putin is a very icy character. Really, he can look at you and it's the Medusa face if he doesn't like something. If you mention the Baltic states, he will freeze. So I would say to him, well, the Baltic states were part of the Soviet Union. What about them? Are they really independent? How far does this new Russian Empire go? He needs to tease that out.

Carlson is sort of a neo-isolationist. Does Carlson's isolationism help Putin’s agenda?

Putin’s goal is to weaken America. Putin has had it up to here with feeling that Russia is a second-class power compared to America. He's fed up with the way they had to go along with the war on terror. He saw what happened in Libya, the Arab Spring. He thinks that America is behind all this, and Russia is being treated badly. So he supports anything that can weaken America. And obviously, because the West is supporting an independent Ukraine, the West is supporting EU membership, Putin wants to break that. He wants a neutral Ukraine in Russia's orbit. And he wants more maneuvering room and to be at the top table. And he wants to weaken the West. And the key power is America.

How does Carlson play into that?

Carlson is a supporter, an admirer of Viktor Orbán in Hungary. Orbán is an autocrat with a capital A. He's an illiberal autocrat. Hungary is not a functioning liberal democracy anymore. So Carson is anti-EU, anti-liberal democracy, and therefore he's carrying Putin’s water here. Because Putin also wants to weaken the EU, and if it comes apart, all to the good because that makes Russia stronger. So Carson's neo-isolationism, his notion that America has no dog in the fight in Ukraine, plays into Putin's hands.

In America, there's been a growing bifurcation between news organizations that are more overtly political and those that are less overtly political. How can Americans learn about how propaganda works, as opposed to how journalism works? How will we be able to tell whether what Carlson is doing is journalism or propaganda?

Let me be clear, I'm in the camp that says if a news organization has the chance to interview Vladimir Putin, now, with the anniversary coming up, they should do it. The problem with Tucker Carlson's interview is that he’s a propagandist. He's blurring the distinction between journalists and propagandists. He’s more than just having opinions; we've all got opinions. But he's not a reporter. He's not an editor. He is a political figure with a pre-ordained point of view.

Now the problem in American journalism, of course, is that this distinction has become blurred compared to 20 years ago, when there was a fairly rigid divide in traditional mainstream media between opinion and reporting, the opinion side and the newsroom. And the second blurring — which we've seen with former President Trump in particular — is the blurring of facts and opinion and the propagation of alternative facts. News organizations in America need to get back to believing in reporting and reporting facts, and not going along with these business models which basically say, identify a target audience, and just do journalism which appeals to that audience, and if you have to blur facts and opinion to build up even more numbers and reinforce loyalty amongst that audience — if traditional norms of journalism have to go out the window — so be it. That's a very dangerous road.

And that's the road in which Carlson was working for a long time.

Yeah. I happen to think that there's room for Fox News or a Fox News-style news organization in America that is center-right or conservative. That's not a problem to me. But when you actually have the kind of behavior that went on in the 2020 election where propagandists are in charge as opposed to people with opinions but also solid reporting, that's a problem. That's a big problem. And then if it's driven to extremes in order to appeal to a kind of radical fringe, that's also a problem. Stirring hate and prejudice, that's not the job of journalists.

And where does Carlson fit into that?

Well, he's certainly a propagandist. I'm not going to accuse him of much more until I see the interview. My question is, at the end of it, am I going to say that he's not just a propagandist, but he’s actually an apologist?
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this article incorrectly referred to the last interview a Western journalist conducted with Putin.