Revelations from Tucker Carlson's Blockbuster Interview with Vladimir Putin

Putin shares the reasons why he invaded Ukraine, his repeated peace offers to the US and Ukraine, why the Soviet Union collapsed and the prospects for World War Three with NATO

Former Fox News host Tucker Carlson interviewing Russian President Vladimir Putin in the Kremlin on February 6th

Yesterday was a historic news day for many reasons not the least of which was the newly released and surprisingly candid interview of Russian President Vladimir Putin by former Fox News talk show host, Tucker Carlson, which took place on February 6^th at the Kremlin given that no US journalist has interviewed him since the war began. The interview was released on the same day That Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelensky announced the firing of the Commander in Chief of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, Valery Zeluzhny who he reportedly views as a political threat and perhaps even a military threat to his continued autocratic rule over Ukraine. In addition, a special counsel report was issued providing the clearest evidence yet that President Joe Biden is completely unfit to hold office.

The interview was quite lengthy at just over two hours. During the first half hour of the interview, Tucker was confronted with a lengthy monologue detailing Russian history and Putin’s view that Ukraine was an artificial creation, a view which I strongly disagree with as a lifelong supporter of Ukrainian independence dating from before the fall of the Soviet Union.  I began to be concerned that Putin was missing his chance to set the record straight on the real reasons he authorized Russia’s limited invasion of Ukraine and reveal Russia’s comparatively reasonable terms for peace. However, the rest of the interview, which was very informative and revealing for all but the most closed-minded neoliberal and neocon ideologues among us, proved that my concerns were unfounded.

Tucker revealed that the Biden administration spent the last few years trying to prevent him from interviewing Putin, but said he finally was able to pull it off. Putin is, of course a brutal dictator, who much like President Joe Biden has worked to imprison his presidential challengers and block them from running against him. However, I found myself impressed by all the times during his 24-year reign he said he has fought for peace with the US and NATO only to be rebuffed as well as by his much-repeated pleas for Ukraine and the West to negotiate peace with Russia to bring a final end to the war. Predictably, Western media immediately condemned the interview as Russian propaganda ignoring the fact that every country engages in the dissemination of propaganda during wartime and at least when it comes to the war in Ukraine, Russian propaganda has a record of being much more grounded in truth and reality than Western/Ukrainian propaganda has been. 

British MI-6 Intelligence Chief Christopher Steele who colluded with former President Barack Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to try to defeat President Donald Trump with false accusations of collusion between his presidential campaign and Russia now leads the British disinformation campaign to deceive the Western public into supporting NATO’s proxy war against Russia in Ukraine

Over the past couple years since the war began, Western disinformation has repeatedly suggested that Putin is suffering from multiple serious health issues including terminal cancer and even that he died over a year ago and had been replaced by a body double. This propaganda story was first circulated by Ukraine in May and subsequently regurgitated by notorious British MI-6 intelligence chief Christopher Steele, the author of the proven false Trump-Russia Dossier, which was paid for by the Hillary Clinton for President campaign and composed with the assistance of a former Russian intelligence officer, who it seems has since been promoted by MI-6 to be in charge of disseminating its disinformation. Zelensky himself repeated this lie in a speech in a January 2023 to the World Economic Forum even after saying a few months earlier that Ukraine would welcome peace negotiations with Russia as soon as Putin had been removed from power.

Contrary to these ridiculous claims and unfounded rumors, during the interview Putin not only appeared to be in good health but surprisingly looked younger than his age. Putin provided a sharp and vigorous in contrast to 81 year-old President Joe Biden whose campaign may have just been dealt a death blow with the release of a devastating report exposing him as senile, dementia ridden and badly cognitively challenged by one of his own loyalists at the Department of Justice. Robert Hur was appointed Special Counsel by US Attorney General Merrick Garland so he could totally whitewash Biden’s crimes associated with the deliberate theft of hundreds if not thousands of classified documents taken up to forty years ago, some of which were likely copied by his son’s Communist Chinese business partners with that likely will cause Democrat Party bosses to force him to end his reelection campaign. But after the report was published, Biden himself viciously attacked the revelations in the report about his complete and total mental incompetence.

Putin is a Rational Actor Committed to Ending the War Unlike Biden and Zelensky

During the interview, Putin came across as a far more rational actor than the bungling fool in the White House, President Joe Biden, and the nefarious Democrat/neocon Republican cabal that controls the US Senate and still wields substantial influence over the US House who seem to lust for an unnecessary nuclear war with Russia, which would destroy the very country they took an oath to protect and defend. I would say that approximately seventy percent of what Putin said was true, particularly what he said about the collapse of the Soviet Union and his repeated attempts to resolve the Ukraine in NATO crisis peacefully whereas about seventy percent of what Biden and Zelensky have said about the war has proven either misleading or false. The day after Tucker’s interview was published on his own website as well as on the popular X social media platform formerly known as Twitter, even liberal regime media outlets like the New York Times are now being forced to admit that Putin wants peace and an end to the ear in Ukraine.

Both Zelensky and Biden have repeatedly claimed this is an existential fight for Ukraine and that Putin’s will not stop until he has succeeded in annexing not just eighteen percent of Ukraine but all of Ukraine, exterminating all Ukrainians who oppose Russian annexation and enslaving the rest, after which he will invade Moldova and the Baltic republics leading to a general war with NATO that would cost the lives of tens of thousands of US soldiers. However, Putin’s actions during the war, confirmed by his statements during his interview earlier this week, prove that all of these claims are complete lies. As longtime readers of “The Real War” newsletter know, as recently as two years ago, I was predicting that Putin had long planned to invade Ukraine as the first step to re-establish a new imperial Russian confederation of nominally independent former Soviet republics that would effectively consist of Russian satellites similar to Belarus or members of the Warsaw Pact during the Cold War. Putin’s unilateral military withdrawal from half of Russian occupied Ukrainian territory in early April 2022 proved he had no such intentions.

After watching the full interview, it’s easy to understand why leftwing, Russophobic Western leaders went so apoplectic in trying to do everything they could to prevent Tucker from interviewing Putin and felt it was such an existential threat because it was so damaging to their knowingly false propaganda narrative about Putin, Russia, the true origins of the war in Ukraine and their false claims that Putin isn't ready for peace because he is still hell bent on trying to conquer all of Ukraine. The interview succeeded in exploding many Western propaganda myths about this and other false claims.

While very long spoken and even boring at times, Putin demonstrated a command of facts and dates speaking over half an hour about Russian history before detailing the many steps he took to attempt to resolve the Ukraine NATO issue with a peaceful diplomatic agreement over the past sixteen years preventing the war from ever happening. Then he detailed how he tried to end the war scarcely a month after it began with a comprehensive peace agreement much of which was signed and approved by Ukraine. Sadly, all of his dedicated peace efforts were rebuffed by the US and its NATO allies who he understandably stated have acted in a duplicitous, deceitful and dishonorable manner, broke all their promises to him including guaranteeing the Minsk accords which Putin said he supported up until a few days before the war and their promise to support the draft peace agreement of Putin first withdrew Russian troops from Kyiv along with fully half of Russian occupied territory in Ukraine.

Putin seemed very sincere in his desire for peace and to avoid an unnecessary war between the Western powers and the Sino-Russian alliance that could cost up to a billion lives that he warned would constitute a global catastrophe of historic proportions. Putin’s repeated pleas for the US and Ukraine to return to the negotiating table for the first time in twenty-two months and his statements that he would be a fool to want war with NATO which could destroy much of the world with a full nuclear exchange or the return of the former Soviet republics of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania proved conclusively both that he is a rational actor. This is contrary to Western mischaracterizations of him as some kind of irrational poor mad Hitlerian dictator bent on nothing less than reuniting the former Soviet Union and invading and re-occupying Eastern Europe. Putin’s restraint in the face of innumerable Western provocations has been remarkable but his forbearance may be reaching its limits. Examples include the US destruction of Nord Stream, the British aided destruction of the Kersch bridge, the US aided assassinations of seven Russian generals, the sinking of Russia’s Black Sea flagship, assisting Ukraine in killing up to 80,000 troops and Ukrainian attacks on Russian nuclear bomber and naval bases. Certainly, he has proven much more rational than Biden and especially Zelensky who has all but declared his main foreign policy objective is to embroil the US and its NATO allies in a direct war with Russia knowing that is his only hope of retaking control of the five Ukrainian oblasts annexed by Russia.

Putin’s Revelations on History Overturn Western Myths

The highlights of the first half hour of the interview was that Putin gave what was in many ways a much more honest explanation of how World War Two actually started than we have heard from Western historians. He discussed how the Poles signed a Non-Aggression Pact with Hitler in 1934, they joined Hitler in carving up Czechoslovakia in 1938 and how Hitler offered them an alliance agreement under the Anti-Comintern Pact. He also described how Hitler demanded the return of the German city of Danzig to cement a new treaty of friendship in October 1938, the month after the Munich Pact was signed, but they refused to negotiate the return of Danzig “forcing Hitler to go to war with them.” These are facts I described in great detail in my previously published, landmark article “Missed Opportunities for Peace—The Secret Diplomatic History of the Second World War.”

Of course, not all of Putin’s recounting of modern history was rooted in fact, most notably his claim that Ukraine is not a real country and didn’t exist until the Soviet Union in 1922. In fact, Ukraine first began to establish a national identity in the mid-18^th century, despite being divided between Russian, Polish and Austrian control, and Ukrainian independence was first proclaimed on January 22, 1918, previously celebrated as Ukrainian Independence Day, after the Germans liberated Ukraine from Russian control until their surrender in November of that year, followed soon after by the Soviet invasion and conquest of Ukraine. He also talked about the arbitrary transfer of Russian Crimea to Ukraine in 1954, despite the fact it had been part of Ukraine which forced millions of Russians to live under Ukrainian rule when Ukraine declared its independence during the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991.

The remainder of the interview was packed full of very important revelations that completely shredded much of the Western disinformation regarding Putin and the war in Ukraine. Perhaps the most important revelation of the entire interview was when Putin stated, “The collapse of the Soviet Union was effectively initiated by the Russian leadership” as a deliberate decision confirming it was planned in advance. This is a fact that as I have been noting for the past few decades, just about every Western historian gets completely wrong claiming it was due to an economic downturn in response to Russia having to build more nuclear missiles to counter President Ronald Reagan’s never built Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) missile defense system. He then added that “Russia even agreed voluntarily and proactively to the collapse of the Soviet Union.” They even believed this would be understood by the so-called civilized West as a basis for cooperation and association. That is what Russia was expecting both from the United States and the so-called collective west as well.” Putin stated he didn't know why Soviet leaders decided to collapse the USSR, again dispelling the long held Western myth that the collapse of the Soviet Union was accidental or precipitated by Reagan’s military buildup. Putin also talked openly about his background as a officer in the First Chief Directorate of the Soviet KGB, since renamed the SVR, tasked with foreign intelligence gathering.

Russia’s Attempts to Achieve Peace with the West Before the War in Ukraine

Putin then provided a detailed account of Russia’s many attempts to achieve a lasting peace with the West after the fall of the Soviet Union and the collapse of Communism. He complained bitterly stating “after 1991 the United States tricked us.” He said Russia was promised by Secretary of State James Baker and other western leaders that if Russia assented to German reunification, NATO would not expand to the east of Germany’s eastern frontier along the Oder River, “not one inch”, but the US did it five times in a violation of the oral agreements of previous Western leaders over strong Russian protests. He said when his predecessor as Russian President, Boris Yeltsin, gave a historic speech to the US Congress in June 1992, it was a signal to the West asking Western leaders “to let us in” to Western institutions like the EU and NATO. Yeltsin reportedly followed Gorbachev’s lead in asking for Russia to join NATO the previous year. He said this was the high point of US-Russian relations, which began to deteriorate in 1995 when Clinton announced that NATO would be expanded to Russia’s borders, causing Russia to align with the PRC the following year.

However, he said the real turning point in Russian relations with the West was the unprovoked NATO aggression and bombing campaign against the former Republic of Yugoslavia, a country with which he said Russia had deep ties due to their shared Eastern Orthodox Christian faith, in 1999 violation of the UN Charter and international law. I was living in Washington, DC at the time and was staunchly opposed to Clinton’s unprovoked bombing campaign against this Christian country in support of Islamist Kosovo-Liberation Army narco-terrorists, transforming NATO from a purely defensive military alliance to an ostensibly offensive alliance with the justification of validating NATO’s continued existence.

Putin noted, despite this NATO aggression, when he became President, he wanted to restore relations with the West and re-open the door to good relations with the West. He said he even asked Clinton in June 2000 at the Kremlin, “Do you think if Russia asked to join NATO do you think it would happen?” Clinton initially replied, “I think so” but after speaking to his advisors changed his tone stating, “I think it’s not possible now.” Putin added that it’s impossible for Russia to join NATO now. Tucker asked if Clinton had said yes, would Russia have joined NATO, and he said yes if he had, the process of Russia joining NATO would have begun and eventually it might have happened. Putin also reportedly asked to join NATO again in 2002 underscoring the fact that he was serious about joining the transatlantic alliance. Needless to say, if Russia had been allowed to join NATO, it would never have invaded Georgia or Ukraine and Ukraine would still control 100 percent of its internationally recognized territory. As I have long stated, the US refusal to allow Russia to join NATO after four known requests made by Russian leaders must be ranked as one of the biggest mistakes of the post-Cold War era.

President Putin and President George W. Bush enjoying sharing a humorous moment shortly after Bush was elected President. Putin said he got along well with Bush but it was Bush’s decision to demand Ukraine and Georgia join NATO that led to the war in Ukraine

Putin said he continued trying to search for common ground with the US even after Russia’s request to join NATO was denied all of which is manifestly true. He blamed the US for supporting the Chechen rebels in their insurgency and terrorist bombing campaign against Russia from 1999-2009. He said after he presented proof to President George W. Bush of CIA support for the bombings, Bush promised to help him fight the Chechens but later the CIA replied to Russia that they had in fact been supporting the Chechen rebels with intelligence, logistic support and weapons and would continue to support the Chechen rebels against Russia despite the fact that Chechnya has been part of Russia for centuries.

Putin then stated that Russia viewed Bush’s decision to build a missile defense system in Eastern Europe as a major threat to its security, even though Russia has the most massive national missile defense system in the world with 10,000 ABM interceptors, a fact he notably left out. He noted that in 2007, he proposed that the US, Russia, and Europe should build a joint missile defense system to ensure their collective security and transform the world for peace--a proposal I have long supported. He said Secretary of Defense Gates and Secretary of State Rice told him the US was declining his proposal to build a joint national missile defense system. Putin then responded that that would force Russia to build more advanced and capable hypersonic missile defense systems and revealed that he has since near-fully modernized Russia’s strategic nuclear arsenal. In 2008, the Bucharest declaration was issued saying Ukraine and Georgia would join NATO over French and German opposition according to their leaders who claimed that Bush strong-armed into agreeing to it. Putin warned President George W. Bush and then Ambassador to Russia William Burns, both of whom he had kind words for, that if the US expanded NATO into Russia, he would take back the Donbass and Crimea according to a declassified memo back in 2008.

The CIA-Backed Euromaidan Coup that Overthrew a Democratically-Elected President

Putin related that in 2004, after President Viktor Yanukovych’s election was overthrown in the Orange Revolution and another vote was held in violation of the Ukrainian constitution with pro-Western leader Viktor Yushchenko becoming Ukrainian President. He said he was fine with Ukraine having a pro-Western leader and met with him on several occasions. Then he said President Yanukovych was elected President again in 2012. He stated that Yanukovych said he needed more time to determine the comparative costs and benefits of whether Ukraine should sign the European Union Association Agreement or join the Russian-led Eurasian Union, which caused the West to act to overthrow him in the Euromaidan coup. He claimed that the US requested that Yanukovych sign a political settlement in which he gave in to rioters’ demands and hold early elections in exchange for being in power and not using force to dispel the rioters, but the US reneged and overthrew him anyway.

Mostly peaceful protesters, aided by $5 billion in CIA front group USAID funding, lay siege to Ukraine’s democratically elected government in February 2014 for refusing to sign the EU Association Agreement. President Yanukovych refused to use force to disperse the increasingly violent protesters.

Putin said the CIA admitted to spending $5 billion to support the violent Euromaidan coup which is true according to multiple sources including “The War in Ukraine-Making Sense of a Senseless Conflict”. Putin stated that the CIA-instigated Euromaidan coup in Ukraine provoked the conflict stating that Russia was forced to act to secure Russia against the existential threat of Ukrainian NATO membership after the US appeared to cross its biggest redline by overthrowing Ukraine’s Russia friendly President and installing its hand-picked unelected puppet leader, former Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk.

He said the new Ukrainian government began prosecuting ethnic Russia’s in Ukraine who opposed the coup in Crimea and in the Donbass and began bombing the Donbass separatists in 2014 heralding the beginning of a Ukrainian civil war. We also know that Ukrainian militants killed thirty pro-Russian protesters who opposed the coup in Odessa by lighting the government building they were holed up in on fire. If ever, there was a legitimate reason for Russia to invade Ukraine to restore its democratically elected President to power and to stop it from bombing and killing its own civilians as it continues to do today, the February 2014 coup was it, but Putin opted not to invade Ukraine at that time other than to engage in a bloodless occupation and takeover of Crimea which is seventy-five percent ethnic Russian and ninety percent Russian speaking and subsequently voted to join Russia overwhelmingly. Since that time, Ukraine has been shelling civilians both in the Donbass and other Russian-annexed regions of Ukraine, causing thousands to be killed and has placed thousands of its own citizens including hundreds of ethnic Russian children on its infamous Myrotvorets kill list for the alleged crime of supporting Russia or merely for posting on social media in support of a peaceful end to the war.

Zelensky declared martial law in March 2022 and banned eleven opposition parties while forcing opposition TV networks to broadcast Ukrainian government propaganda 24/7. Many opposition leaders have fled Ukraine or gone into hiding since to escape imprisonment or even assassination by SBU death squads operating behind the lines in Russian annexed areas of Ukraine. Needless to say, all these sordid facts make an absolute mockery of Biden’s claims that we are fighting a war on behalf of democracy and against autocracy in Ukraine. After Zelensky attempted to implement the Minsk Accords by withdrawing all Ukrainian militias from the Donbass region in 2019. However, a few of Ukraine’s far right, neo-Nazi militias refused his demands they do so. Ironically, after they reportedly placed his wife, Olena Zelenska, was reportedly put on the Myrotvorets hit list, he was forced to adopt a much more combative tone against Russia including threatening to retake Crimea in March 2021 and again in December 2021. This caused Russian troops to mass on Ukraine’s borders both months and ultimately stage a limited invasion of Ukraine to counter this perceived threat to Russian Crimea and the separatist Donbass republics. Ukraine placed me on their blacklist back in July 2022 along with 34 other “high-profile” Americans for daring to publish a 15-point peace plan which received a lot of international attention, in response to my call for a popular referendum for the Donbass region to determine whether they wanted to remain part of Ukraine or become independent.

Putin stated that Russia attempted to end the Ukrainian Civil War raging in the Donbass region by supporting the Minsk Agreements of 2014-2015, the implementation of which was guaranteed by France and Germany. The terms of the Minsk Accords was that both Russian and Ukrainian troops including Ukrainian neo-Nazi militia groups would withdraw from the Donbass region and Ukraine would change its constitution from a unitary state to a federal republic granting autonomy to Donetsk and Luhansk which have large Russian minorities totaling forty percent of their population, in return for which the Russian-backed Donbass separatist republics would be disbanded and return to being part of Ukraine. Putin said he was willing to work hard to persuade the Russian backed separatists to return to being part of Ukraine under the Minsk accords but neither Zelensky nor Western leaders were willing to adhere to the Minsk accords. Instead, they wanted to resolve the Civil war in the Donbass by force, all of which is true as the vast majority of the 14,000 Ukrainians killed in the Donbass from 2014-2022 were killed in Russian separatist territories. Putin said he could not allow that to happen, so he acted to end Ukraine’s war against the Russian separatist republics in the Donbass.

Why did Russia invade Ukraine in 2022?

Tucker asked Putin why Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022. In response, Putin repeated his assertion that Ukraine started the Ukrainian Civil War in 2014 by bombing Russian separatists in the Donbass region. Putin said Russia intervened in Ukraine to “stop the war” which Ukraine was waging against the Russian backed Donetsk People’s Republic and Luhansk People’s Republic, which was killing thousands of ethnic Russian civilians and, whose independence Putin had refused to recognize for eight years out of a desire to implement the Minsk Accords under which they were to remain part of Ukraine. Putin had previously stated that Russia invaded Ukraine because it had actionable intelligence that the Ukrainian Army was preparing for a ground invasion of the Russian-backed Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics. He also alleged NATO was beginning to create military bases in Ukraine that threatened Russia’s security so that provoked Russia to war. Putin’s steadfast support for the Minsk Accords as Russia’s preferred diplomatic solution to the Ukraine crisis, right up until the Russian invasion strongly suggest that Russia’s subsequent and ongoing territorial dispute with Ukraine was very much secondary to his rationale for invading Ukraine and not his primary goal as Western leaders have mistakenly claimed.

Putin said Zelensky was elected on a campaign of peace with Russia in 2019 but he broke his promises and abandoned his pursuit of peace.  He said Zelensky came to fear the neo-Nazis and the US would only give support to Ukraine if he became more militant against Russia. He lamented that Zelenksy would not implement the Minsk Agreements as he believed had he done so the war in Ukraine would have been completely averted. Then he stated the former European Presidents who guaranteed the implementation of the Minsk agreement later said they had no intention of implementing it at all which Putin said was to deceive Russia all of which is public knowledge. He also said Ukraine removed Russia from being a non-official language and ethnicity.

Putin declared he would have never lifted a finger to retake Crimea, or the Donbass were it not for the Euromaidan coup because Russia accepted the post-Soviet borders, but he said Russia never agreed to NATO expansion or Ukrainian membership in NATO or NATO bases in Ukraine. Given that literally all of Russia’s offensive actions from 2008-2022 have been in direct response to Western provocations, Putin is likely telling the truth.  He said that even after the Minsk peace agreements were signed and Russian began implementing them, NATO began the process of transforming Ukraine into becoming a member of NATO by training and arming its military, establishing military bases in Ukraine, and engaging in joint military exercises there. Putin asked why it was necessary for the US to try to bring Ukraine into NATO? He said he believes it was the US military industrial complex wants to encourage US leaders to weaken Russia to justify increased weapons production and military contracts to break up Russia and use parts of Russia to fight China. Putin accused the US of seeking to achieve regime change in Russia which is something Biden called for only a few months after the war began in saying he wanted Putin to be removed from power and tried on war crimes charges.

Tucker asked Putin if he ever warned the US and NATO to halt their provocative moves in Ukraine and Putin replied that he had done so many times since 2008. Next, he asked when the last time Putin talked to Biden, and he said not since before the war two years ago. Putin said he told Biden he was making a huge mistake by continuing to support Ukraine in NATO. He said certain contacts are being maintained between the Biden administration and Russia, likely refer to unofficial back door discussions both with the Director of the CIA, William Burns, who traveled to Moscow to offer a peace deal in January 2023 which would have allowed Russia to retain all of its annexed territory from Ukraine but mandated Russia drop its opposition to Ukraine’s bid for NATO membership, as well as former senior US officials who traveled to Moscow to sound out Russia’s proposed peace terms last year.

Tucker asked if he thought that NATO was worried about the war escalating to becoming a nuclear war. Putin replied that NATO leaders were fearmongering their citizens to believe Russia is planning on invading NATO. Asked if he could conceive of Russia invading Poland, Putin said Russia has no interest in invading Poland or the Baltics unless NATO attacked Russia first. He said the scaremongering is meant to get popular support from its citizens to provide more aid to Ukraine. Putin said the US goal is to prolong NATO’s proxy war in Ukraine as long as they can to weaken Russia as much as possible. He said there are a lot of mercenaries from Poland and the US which is true. There have been upwards of 20,000 Polish army veterans to fight in the Polish Legion in Ukraine and a report was leaked in November 2022 stating that 1,200 of them had been killed in combat. In speaking to a former Polish member of parliament last year, he informed me that the Polish government has banned all public discussion of Polish Legion veterans dying in combat. There have also been several US citizens who volunteered to fight in the Ukrainian Foreign Legion that have been killed in combat. Putin said he doesn’t want war with the West.

He implied that there needs to be a collective security agreement for the entire world rather than having the world divided into blocs like NATO remarking, “A new security system should be established in leadership…to include the United States, Canada and Russia and other European countries but NATO needs not to expand or else everything would be as before except NATO’s boundaries would be closer to Russia.” He then reassured Tucker that only if NATO sent combat troops to fight Russia directly in Ukraine it would it escalate to World War Three. He asked why the US would want a direct war with Russia when Ukraine is located thousands of miles away. Then he asked, “wouldn’t it be better to negotiate peace” with Russia ending the death and destruction in Ukraine and trying to find common interests rather than fight a catastrophic and unnecessary war risking the destruction of much of the world?

President Joe Biden threatening to destroy the Nordstream pipelines if Russia invades Ukraine at a speech with German Chancellor Olaf Shultz in February 2022

Tucker asked him who blew up Russia’s Nord stream pipelines. Putin said we need to determine who had both an interest in destroying it and who had the capability to do it. Tucker asked since he says he has the proof that the Biden administration destroyed the pipelines why not just release the proof to the public. Putin replied that Russia can’t win a propaganda war because the US controls the Western media so even if Russia showed the proof that the Biden administration destroyed it no one would believe it because Russian media is censored in the US. Tucker then asked why Germany wouldn’t reveal that the US attacked Germany’s critical infrastructure and pushed them into a deep recession? Putin replied it is because Germany and other NATO members are little more than US satellite states and are afraid to anger US leaders. He said he has offered to open the surviving natural gas pipeline as well as the one through Poland to ease Germany’s ongoing economic recession but both Germany and Poland have closed the pipelines which Putin encouraged them to open them. He said there are still natural gas pipelines in Ukraine that Russia could use to supply it to Europe, but Ukraine has closed their pipelines as well. He stated its against Germany’s economic interests not to buy cheap Russian natural gas but because of US pressure they refuse to do so.

He said Russia is the fifth ranked economic power by Purchase Power Parity which is true according to one estimate but it is typically rated the sixth largest by most estimates and stated that the Russian economy has weathered Western sanctions very well and is continuing to grow.. He said Biden made a huge mistake by using the dollar as a weapon against Russia and other countries it doesn’t like because it is causing other countries to abandon the dollar as its reserve currency which is the key to preserving US power across the world damaging the US economy. He said Russia used to conduct 85% of its financial transactions in dollars but now only 13% because Biden cut off their SWIFT banking transaction access.

Putin talked about Russia’s friendly relationship with China and said he is not worried about Chinese dominance over Russia which he suggested is a Western claim to divide them. He said he opposes as a matter of principle US economic sanctions against Russia and China and its allies. Putin says the world is changing and the US is responding by bombing invading and occupying other countries including fighting a proxy war against Russia in Ukraine to try to retain a US led international order but there is a time limit for the US to adjust and adapt to the continuing changes in the balance of power and the international order peacefully implying that further US use of force could lead to a world war no one wants. He said it is important for the world is changing and the US position of the world is changing with it. The only question is whether this will happen painfully and quickly or slowly and gradually again seeming to imply that if the US does not learn to resolve international conflicts peacefully as he has advocated it could lead to a world war.

Istanbul Peace Agreement Trashed by Ukraine in April 2022

Tucker asked if there are any peace negotiations going on with the US or Ukraine to end the war? Putin said the peace agreement, a signed copy of which he displayed at a meeting of the African Union back in June, was almost finalized in Istanbul on March 31, 2022, but Ukraine trashed the agreement after Russian troops withdrew and decided to fight Russia to the bitter end. Putin said his counterparts in France and Germany said it was necessary to create the conditions for the signing of the final peace agreement and that Ukraine should not be pressured to sign the agreement under duress “with a gun to its head.” He stated that French President Macron and German President Olaf Shultz asked Putin to withdraw Russian troops from Kyiv and northern Ukraine to prove his commitment to peace, so he said he agreed and withdrew Russian forces from half of Russian occupied territory in the first week of April 2022.

He said as soon as Russia pulled back its troops out of three northern Ukrainian oblasts, the Ukrainian negotiators threw the draft peace agreements in the trash and began preparing for a long war with the help of the US and its satellites in Europe. Putin mentioned that the lead negotiator for Ukraine is the leader of the Ukrainian party said the peace agreement was ready to sign but Boris Johnson promised Ukraine a blank check of Western aid if they kept fighting Russia to liberate all Russian controlled Ukrainian territory. Tucker asked Putin why Boris Johnson and Biden killed the peace agreement and he said because they thought Russia could be defeated on the battlefield. Putin said Russia has been attempting to finalize peace negotiations to end the war since Ukraine pulled out of peace talks but Zelensky issued a decree in September 2022 banning any peace negotiations with Russia.

Tucker asked Putin if Russia had achieved its aims yet and Putin said not all of them because one of their aims was so-called “de-Nazification” meaning the prohibition of all neo-Nazi movements which he said Russia discussed with Ukraine in Istanbul in March 31, 2022 while negotiating the interim peace agreement signed by Russia and Ukraine only five weeks after the invasion. Tucker asked Putin twice what he meant by the term “de-Nazification”? Putin said after gaining independence, Ukraine built its nationalist identity around Ukrainian nationalist leaders who collaborated with Hitler like Stephen Bandera who founded the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists and served as its leader when he was not imprisoned by the Germans or serving in captivity in a German concentration camp. He said there were attempts by Ukrainians leaders during and after World War I and during World War Two to try to persecute the Russian minority in Ukraine which may be partly true. He said the OUN helped the Nazis kill off the Polish, Jews and Russians in Ukraine and while that may be true to a limited extent, there is no evidence that Bandera ordered any such atrocities or participated in them given the fact that the Germans never allowed him to return to his Ukrainian homeland. Of course, Putin did not mention that the Soviets mass murdered 6-10 million Ukrainians from 1932-1945 during the Holodomor and World War Two. Stalin likely killed more Ukrainians than the Germans during the war itself with some Ukrainians claiming the Nazis treated them better than the Soviets explaining why so many ethnic Ukrainians have come to fear and hate the Russians.

Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelensky gives a fist salute to former Ukrainian SS soldier who received a standing applause from the Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and the Canadian Parliament

Putin stated neo-Nazis in Ukraine today use Nazi symbols and that the West opposes neo-Nazis in their own country but supports them in Ukraine. He gave the example of the Canadian Parliament and Zelensky giving a standing ovation in honor of a 98-year-old Canadian citizen who had been a Ukrainian nationalist who fought the Russians on the side of the Nazis during World War Two while serving in the Waffen SS claiming that he committed killed innocent civilians despite the fact there is no evidence that he did so. He asked why Zelensky would applaud a former SS member since he himself is a Jew. Putin says he believes that Russians and Ukrainians are one people but if Ukrainians believe they are a separate nation, it is their right to self-determination but not on the basis of neo-Nazism. Putin said Ukraine agreed as part of the peace agreement in Istanbul that the neo-Nazi parties in Ukraine would be banned from representation in the Ukrainian Rada and Russia is continuing to demand that as part of a peace agreement ending the war.

Putin Pleas for US to “Correct It’s Mistake” and Negotiate End to War

Putin told Tucker Russia has always wanted a peace settlement ending the war and drafted a lengthy peace document in March 2022 many of the provisions of which were initialed by the head of the Ukrainian delegation. Putin said he “repeatedly, repeatedly proposed peaceful diplomatic solutions to the problems in Ukraine but no one would listen” to Russia. Putin said all of Russia’s goodwill measures have gone unreciprocated by the US and the West. Putin said Russia has never refused and has always been ready for peace negotiations since the war began and that it has been Biden and Zelensky that have refused all peace negotiations with Russia since early April 2022. He stated that Ukraine has proven to be a satellite state of the US, so it does whatever the US tells him to do. Putin called for Zelensky to cancel his decree banning peace negotiations with Russia so the war could be ended.

He said if Biden was serious about ending the war, he needs to stop supplying weapons to Ukraine and then the war would be over within a few weeks and then peace talks could begin to negotiate peace terms. Tucker then asked Putin if he thought NATO could agree to a peace agreement recognizing Russian control over the Ukrainian territory it has annexed and he responded by saying he would be willing to help them do it in a face-saving way to end the war. Putin was asked if a new President was elected would it be possible to negotiate an end to the war and he suggested it would be. He concluded by stating that Russia’s ongoing war with Ukraine is in many ways a civil war between brothers due to their common heritage. He criticized Zelensky for dismantling the Ukrainian Orthodox Church which he called a unifying force between Russia and Ukraine. Putin expressed confidence that the war will end soon with all the problems in Ukraine and that relations between Russians and Ukrainians will heal.

Putin stated twice during the interview that Ukraine’s declaration of state sovereignty in 1991 committed itself to remain a neutral state and Russia’s special military operation sought to restore Ukraine’s neutral status aligned with neither Russia or NATO. Given Russia’s stated objective in invading Ukraine was to restore Ukraine to its pre-Maidan coup neutral status and the objective of his proposed draft mutual security agreements with the US and NATO was to return NATO to its pre-2016 Warsaw Summit status with no US or Western troops deployed in Eastern Europe, it would seem that Russia that has proven to be much more of a status quo power while the US had been trying to expand its liberal empire 1100 miles eastward over the past quarter century which is what provoked the war in the first place.

I have long described myself as a lifelong Cold Warrior as I studied and trained as a US Army officer during the final years of the Cold War and, in many ways, I continue to think in Cold War terms particularly in my deep aversion to direct military confrontation and nuclear brinkmanship with Russia and China. In 1987 I took a Russian-language class in college in the belief that Russia would one day employ nuclear weapons to defeat the United States and occupy us once the correlation of forces had shifted decisively in their favor. Thankfully. I was proven wrong and since then and I have realized my long-held belief that Russia wants to catastrophically attack and destroy us is mistaken. As recently as 1997, I wrote a never published book manuscript, entitled “America in Danger” in which I articulated my belief that Russia was still essentially Communist-led, something I stopped believing over two decades ago with my issuance of my first comprehensive peace proposal with Russia back in 2003 with the objective of dividing and disrupting the Sino-Russian military alliance and eliminating this existential threat.

I remain unapologetic in my strong stance in opposition to the Evil Soviet Empire and its ideological heir, Communist China, but anyone would be a fool not to admit that Russia has changed drastically since Soviet days. As I have been stating for the past couple years, Russia is only an adversary today because America’s foolish and antagonistic policy of expanding our liberal empire all across Russia’s western borders has made it an enemy. Accordingly, a reversal of these policies embodied in my call for a grand strategic partnership for peace with the Russian Federation can make it a friend once again.

From his interview, Putin made clear that he has no territorial ambitions in Europe aside from the territory Russia annexed in September 2022. After watching this interview, I feel reassured that it won’t be Putin that starts World War III, it will be Chinese President Xi Jinping or Joe Biden. Putin correctly noted that the war could end within a few weeks if the US cuts off military assistance to Ukraine. That is the key to ending the war and saving hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian soldiers from having to die in an unwinnable war and saving Ukraine from losing a lot more of its territory. Let us all hope and pray that our great House Speaker Mike Johnson sticks to his guns and refuses to allow a House vote on the $60 billion Ukraine aid bill. That is the only way to force Zelensky to return to the negotiating table and end this senseless war with a Korean-style armistice along the current line of control as I proposed nearly a year and a half ago.

© David T. Pyne 2024

David T. Pyne, Esq. is a former U.S. Army combat arms and Headquarters staff officer, who was in charge of armaments cooperation with the former Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, the Middle East, Africa and the Americas from 2000-2003, with an M.A. in National Security Studies from Georgetown University. He currently serves as Executive Vice President of the Task Force on National and Homeland Security and as a member of the Committee on the Present Danger-China. He recently served as Defense and Foreign Policy Advisor to a top-tier presidential candidate. He has also co-authored the best-selling new book, “Catastrophe Now--America’s Last Chance to Avoid an EMP Disaster” and his new book “A Nuclear Posture Review for Advanced Technology Weapons” will be published in spring 2024. He serves as the Editor of “The Real War” newsletter at dpyne.substack.com and as a contributor to “The National Interest”. Here is a link to his interview archive. He may be reached at emptaskforce.ut@gmail.com.

Recent Media Interviews

January 15th-Interview with Nima Rostami Alkhorshid on his “Dialogue Works” podcast to discuss the ongoing wars in Gaza and Ukraine. and the prospects for a peaceful end to both conflicts. Here is the link.

January 21st—Interview with former Salt Lake County District Attorney Republican nominee Danielle Ahn on her “Danielle Ahn Direct” podcast to discuss the wars in Ukraine and Gaza and the ramifications of the Taiwanese presidential election. Here is the link to the interview.

January 23rd—Interview with Jon Twitchell on his Talk with Jon show to rebut Joel Skousen’s false claims about my positions on foreign policy issues and discuss the rising threat of the war with China following the DPP presidential election victory of a candidate which China has denounced as a harbinger for war with the PRC. Here is the link to the radio interview.

January 23rd—I will be presenting a briefing at the Food Storage Depot at 10366 Redwood Road in South Jordan, Utah from 6:30-8pm entitled “How American Can Avert World War Three and Ensure our National Survival.” The link to the presentation is listed above.

January 24th—Interview with Brannon Howse on his Worldview Weekend Broadcast Network to discuss this article. Here is the link to the recording.

January 25th—Interview on Living Hope Esparanza to discuss the wars in Ukraine and Gaza and the coming war with China over Taiwan. Here is a link to my interview.

January 26th—Interview with Paul Jensen on KTALK AM 1640 from 7am-8am MDT to rebut Joel Skousen’s false claims about my positions on foreign policy issues and discuss the ongoing wars in Ukraine and Gaza and the possibility they may escalate to World War Three. Here is the link.

January 31st—Interview with Brannon Howse on his Worldview Weekend Broadcast Network to discuss the increasing Chinese cyber threat, the chances of war with China over Taiwan later this year, the Iranian nuclear threat and how the US should respond to Iranian proxy attacks in the Middle East. Here is a link to the interview.

February 2nd—Interview with Jared Anderson and Holly Crowley-Rabanne who host the Tooele Happy Hour podcast to discuss what our citizens can do to help save America from an unnecessary world war with Russia and China as well as what they can do to help save their families in the event the power gets turned off for good at the start of a catastrophic war. Here is the link.

February 9th-Interview with REN TV to discuss Zelensky’s likely reasons for firing of Ukrainian Commander-in-Chief General Valery Zeluzhny and how it will likely affect the course of the war in Ukraine.

February 14th—Interview with Brannon Howse on his Worldview Weekend Broadcast Network radio and TV shows to discuss the threat of a Iranian nuclear/super EMP missile launch from a cargo ship as well as the request by House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Turner to declassify a Russian plan to put a nuclear (likely super-EMP) weapon in orbit to use to destroy US satellites on the first day of any war with them.

Upcoming Media Interviews

April 18th—I will be presenting an extensive briefing at the Firm Foundation Expo at the Mountain America Expo Center at 9575 South State Street in Sandy, Utah at 5pm to discuss the increasing threat of World War Three with Russia, China, North Korea and Iran and what we need to do to avert it.