Tucker Carlson’s latest interview with Russian President Vladimir Putin attracted a considerable number of viewers, including some US lawmakers, with about 206 million watches recorded on X.
But there’s one fairly important person who didn’t bother tuning into the interview at all: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
In an interview with Fox News’s Bret Baier that aired on Thursday, Zelenskyy told the news anchor that he didn’t watch the interview conducted by the former Fox News host, in which Putin often rambled on with a revisionist version of Russian history. Zelenskyy said he got some of the main points of the episode from the media and his advisors.
“I don’t have time to hear more than two hours of bullshit about us, about the world, about United States, about our relations, and this interview with a killer,” Zelenskyy told Baier in his own words and not through a translator.
Historians previously told Business Insider that Putin gave a curious interview with Carlson that revealed little about the war in Ukraine (beyond that it will continue) and more about the Russian leader’s delusions.
For about half an hour, Putin delved into an uninterrupted monologue about why Ukraine is not a sovereign country, using some of the same talking points he has used to justify the invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
“Putin seems like a delusional man who has lost touch with reality, yammering on about Rurik and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth,” Simon Miles, an assistant professor at Duke University’s Sanford School of Public Policy and a historian of the Soviet Union and US-Soviet relations, previously told BI.
Carlson also admitted that he was “annoyed” at Putin’s answers and felt the Russian president was “filibustering.” But he later concluded, “After watching all this, no, that was the predicate to his answer.”
During the interview with Baier, Zelenskyy continued to push for more US aid, arguing that Ukraine is in an “unfair war” as Russia fights with more artillery and manpower.
“Our artillery has a range of around 20 km because we don’t have long-range weapons,” Zelenskyy said. “Russians have an artillery range of 40 km. That’s not fair.”
Additional US aid to Ukraine remains in limbo.
On February 13, the Senate passed a bill that would allot $60 billion to support Ukraine, but the funding faces an uncertain future in the House with strong opposition from MAGA Republicans.
House Speaker Mike Johnson has said that he won’t rush to pass the bill.
