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Written by Uriel Araujo, researcher with a focus on international and ethnic conflicts
Much has been said about “The Vladimir Putin Interview”, hosted by American political commentator Tucker Carlson, which premiered on February 8 (the full transcript can be read here). It was the first interview granted by the Russian president since he launched the ongoing military campaign in Ukraine. Most Western media reports have talked about it using words such as “propaganda” and “disinformation”. The Guardian’s piece described it as “Putin lecturing the conservative host on his distorted views of Russian and Ukrainian history.” In fact, whether one likes Putin or not and whether one agrees with his conclusions and decisions or not, most mainstream Western historians and experts would acknowledge at least the premises and historical facts mentioned by the Russian leader as accurate – rather than “distorted”.
Take Putin’s much criticized claim that Russians and Ukrainians even today are “one people”, for instance – a claim he had been making years before the said interview, often using the word “narod”, that is a “people” or a community with a shared history, not “natsiia” (nation).
When the Russian president started talking about his country’s special relationship with neighboring Ukraine, he talked about the beginning of the Russian state in 862, and Rurik, in a digression that lasted over twenty minutes and has been much mocked by Western commentators. His main point, though, not just during that part of the interview but throughout the whole conversation, was to highlight that the Russian-Ukrainian statehood ties go way back and also to stress the relative novelty of the independent Ukrainian state. Those are really basic points about Eastern Slavic history.
Consider this: in a survey taken six months before the war, over 40 percent of Ukrainians nationwide (“and nearly two-thirds in the east and south”), agreed with Putin that Ukrainians and Russians are “one people”, according to Nicolai N. Petro, a professor of political science at the University of Rhode Island, writing for Foreign Policy – not Tucker Carlson, mind you, and certainly not a “Putin’s propagandist”. This is no “ancient History”, either.
Back to History, anyway, let us take, for instance, Chris Hann’s 2023 academic article called “On peoples, history, and sovereignty”. Mr. Hann is a Director Emeritus at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle, and an expert in Eastern and Central European peoples. In his aforementioned article, the ethnologist makes a distinction between “historical” and “non-historical” peoples, because, he writes, “it might reasonably be supposed that a people such as the Ukrainians, who have only been known as such since the nineteenth century, is more exposed to geopolitical vagaries than those with a longer continuous pedigree of statehood and Hochkultur.” The Hegelian (and Marxist) idea that some peoples “lack a history” (geschichtslos) does not imply, it should be stressed, any kind of “inferiority”. In those terms, “historical nations” are merely those that possess a long tradition of statehood and clearly defined national identity. For centuries, Ukrainian identity has been part of a larger Russian identity, and to this day, millions of Ukrainians think of the categories “Russian” and “Ukrainian” as being aligned and compatible – and not fully separated.
In the interview, Putin went so far as to rhetorically describe the ongoing conflict as having “an element of civil war” so as to emphasize his point about there being a deep historical connection – but Putin himself concedes that being supposedly part of the same “people”, does not necessarily entail being part of the same state:
“I say that Ukrainians are part of the one Russian people. They say, ‘No, we are a separate people.’ Okay, fine. If they consider themselves a separate people, they have the right to do so, but not on the basis of Nazism, the Nazi ideology”.
This brings us to another key point often made by Russian authorities – and scholars of all political persuasions, by the way.
One could say, in fact, that Putin was quite “timid” to talk about the topic in his exchanges with Carlson. He did not mention the infamous Azov regiment, for example, described by CNN, in 2022, as a “far-right battalion” with “a key role in Ukraine’s resistance”, which has “a neo-Nazi history.” This is not just a paramilitary militia turned into an official unit within the Ukrainian National Guard, but a larger social movement. Political scientists Ivan Gomza and Johann Zajaczkowski detail the far-right politics of the Azov movement in their chapter “Black Sun Rising: Political Opportunity Structure Perceptions and Institutionalization of the Azov Movement in Post-Euromaidan Ukraine”, published in 2019, by the Cambridge University Press.
Again, this is not “Russian propaganda”, but actual facts about the Ukrainian regime today. Ivan Katchanovski, in turn, who was a Visiting Scholar at the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Harvard University, wrote, in 2016, on how Fascist groups, albeit a minority of the Ukrainian voters, have had a key role in national politics:
“The far right achieved significant but not dominant role in the Ukrainian politics during and since the ‘Euromaidan.’… Far right organizations and their armed units had a key role in major cases of political violence during and after the ‘Euromaidan,’ and they attained an ability to overthrow by force the government of one of the largest European countries”.
He adds that “as a result of the far right involvement in the violent overthrow of the Yanukovych government by means of the Maidan massacre the far right organizations achieved their strongest influence in Ukraine since its independence in 1991” and “because of their involvement in the government overthrow, the war in Donbas, integration in the government and the law enforcement, and ability to overthrow the government, the influence of the far right organizations in Ukraine became greater compared to other countries in Europe.”
Putin’s several mentions of Poland have also confused even educated people in the English-speaking world – but, as I wrote elsewhere, it is just impossible to talk about Ukrainian identity and nationalism without mentioning their complicated relations with the Poles since the 16th century. In addition, Ukraine today glorifies the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), which, in collaboration with Nazi Germany, committed genocide against Poles, according to respected Western and Ukrainian historians such as Yaroslav Hrytsak, a fact that, predictably, is not well received in Poland.
Of course, any head of state giving an interview during a conflict will be also engaging in PR and it would be naive to think otherwise. With that in mind, it is still true that even after peace is achieved, as long as ethnic Russians and philo-Russians remain marginalized in Ukraine and as long as NATO enlargement goes on, there still will be room for tension and conflict – internally and internationally. It is about time to talk about those issues. Or one can just shrug them all off as merely “Russian propaganda.” The latter would be an ill-informed stance, though.
this interview is dead after navalny was killed in prison. i seriously think that putin should show political responsibility and resign from presidenatla elections. lately, he has been piling up mistake after mistake, and his hesitant approach to ukraine and showing goodwill to the western “partners” has brought russia endless hardship, the loss of friendly countries, and deep contempt.
he should be replaced by someone new, ideally someone who is not known in the west at all and who will be a real puzzle and challenge for the american intelligence services to learn about his history and weaknesses.
funny, you and the rand corporation and the five eyes and the economist all want putin replaced. thanks for playing.
putin is a burden to russia. even prigozhin would be better president then putin, with his career of selling hotdogs and being jailed.
watch carlson’s interview with hungarian president orban. orban explains very clearly why westerners do not understand why putin is popular and why russia works the way it does. and because orban is telling the ugly truth out loud, he is unpopular with western leaders.
you shouldn’t try to exploit navalny ‘s demise. the guardian did a piece month’s ago the guy was seriously ill and was moved for medical treatment. his whereabouts were disclosed by them. we know the secret services dont view hospitals as off limits thanks to the israelis. poor guy was a political nobody but was probably killed for a zelensky soundbite.
it is not about navalny, navalny’s death is only the most recent mistake of putin’s team. putin has his mantra about “multipolar world and mutual interests and cooperation between nations”. it is bullshit. he is an idiot. it will never work and anybody who lived at least a month in the west knows it.
imagine russia and china as owners of the shop selling something really fragile. glass decorations for example. china produces it, russia is owner of the shop and they are sharing the profit together. this can work. but america is a bad guy with hand grenade inside this shop and he wants the entire cash for himself or he wants to blow up the store
what putin is doing is trying to persuade the bad guy very politely to have a little empathy for the chinese workers who created all these glass ornaments and the russian owners who build the store and to be fair and not take all the money, but only half. but americans have no empathy. never. they are very bad at it. putin’s fault for not knowing. old putin is acting as imbecile. instead of kicking their ass he is trying give them more ransom and be more polite.
so as the ukrainian cia project continues to fall apart, the big issue is still putin? with your one talking point you sure conjured a lot of posts. i suppose though, that if it’s the best you can do, it’s the best you can do.
so cia killed him in gulag or what.
well, doctor shit-cock, i don’t know. how did he die, and why would the russians kill him just as the carlson interview rolls in the magas and the ukrainians lose the us outpost at avdeevka? let me know when you get the pathology report back from the lab.
the start is accused, convicted and jailed for 100% legal stuff.
cia project in ukraine works perfectly fine. russia lost 100.000 people, the u.s. lost couple of mercenaries. russia has mess on their own borders meanwhile the u.s. is thousands kilometers away and nobody dares to confront them on their own soil. imbeciles in south front are writing propaganda about “advance” but the reality is that russia fight back it’s own territory which was systematically destroyed for 9 years and it is a hellhole where nobody wants to live.
firstly, there is no “the west”. second, few in the us empire know anything about anything. still, you’re a very lazy troll. not much beyond a few hasbara-type talking points.
you learned that as a parrot from before you were born.
the only thing you can is naming the rest of the world as troll, hasbaras and like that.
and you lie telling there is no west. but its used right here everyday.
doctor shit-cock, there isn’t even a unified united states of america. the society is completely divided. and that’s the metropol of the empire. if you want to pretend that germans and spaniards and basques and scots are a unified entity just because all the ones you meet in the toilet have sex with your mouth, it doesn’t make it so.
i compare in results for all of us.
usa gdp is 75.000, russia some 15.000 and my denmark 65.000. by that we live longer better.
you has learned or assume too much, which is far out.
navaljev is only a last of many killed ones.
prigorsin got medicine too or what.
you’re hitting the navalny thing hard, nafomo! keep up the good work until it falls out of the news in two weeks. best of luck with your new talking points.
its all over the world as another one…
no see a navaljev as solation for russia at all, what its strange having socalled election i marts/april between on candidate.
doctor shit-cock, what possible benefit could the russians derive from killing navalny just as avdeevka collapses and tucker carlson gives them the “dope” straight from the horse’s mouth? go back to your amyl nitrate.
thats not the point at all.
the point is any oppinion systematicly are knocked and russia is a frozen museúm with callapsed ideas – from navajev to prigorsin.
oink oink bang bang cia kuntz. take your losing azzes on over to the ukr pubs… all shit hole cia op usaid, democracy now, any usg ngo, voice of amerikuntz, radio europajopa, anything western sponsored, stay away from it. kick these cia cucks from your counrty. save your people, no to cia assclown academy!
hells yeah fakapig.
it would be interesting to hear a us president expound on us history: a group of religious settlers faced by intolerance in their native lands moved from europe to the americas-settled the lands; helped by the indigenous population to survive the initial hardship of settlement; became established; decided to force out the natives to take their land to allow further settlement and more settlers; decided to force the natives onto land reserved for them…
the puritans were hardly faced by religious intolerance. the roundheads could engage in sectarian violence with the best of them. they managed to outlaw christmas and easter.
clyde, i know your astute from your comments but think of the name puritans and its origin. they fled to the us because of the religious settlement of the scottish monarchs who took over england and their failure to adopt calvinism in the church of england. they thought the presbyterian scots would convert england to calvinism. didnt happen so they settled in the us.
again, they did not have to flee due to religious persecution. they formed the government in england at one point.
you russian indoctrinated people are too much complicated. americans have no regrets, no empathy, no hardship. they have profits and these little pesky useless craps that can’t be sold they happily leave to the russians, chinese and other subhumans. they are perfectly fine with that and they sleep well.
you should read some of the biographies of the german landser that fought in russia. they too thought the russian were a worthless piece of scum until they fought them and realised pretty quickly they’d been fed worthless propaganda. t 34 was a shock then as the hypersonic missiles are now.
the americans lost almost 4000 aircraft to the vietnamese and their inferior communist weapons. but most americans couldn’t spell marx, nor find vietnam, nor russia for that matter, on a map.
thanks no need. thats has been open free world litterature for long.
not nice but mainly true.
its behaviorism in its worst. bees live like too. the workers has to work as the system tell them, if dont its out(usa has record in prisons, homelees and tailer parks).
its already well descrieded in tons of facts.
you can find it for free medias the internet and as in tons of free books at any library.
and all sides are there and not only martin luther king and john f. kennedy in berlin.
good points, very well written text. thanks mr. araujo.
the usual internal selfie version.
everyone here know as the whole ting in full. by that millions of own oppions about it.
all here know he and his are patetic liars and add and suntract as well as it goes. its like a dentist putting sand in the bread to have a job.
and thats it in my parts of the world.
whole ting put in my rektum in full. my parts bleeding
i never wrote that
putin’s implicit ‘historical’ argument in this interview is that us toady boris yeltsin+assorted goons had no choice but to destroy the cccp in 1990 ‘because’ the until-then meaningless borders between cccp republics were at that point overwhelmingly all-determining and in any case much stronger than the mandate arisen from that 75% of all cccp people who voted to keep the cccp united. great logic!
the historical truth is that the “nationalisms” that putin said were created by lenin+stalin were jump started with help of usa advisers+us money given to putin’s mentor and selector, the repulsive traitor and sell-out to the west, b.yelsin. so putin is disingenuous when blaming lenin+stalin for creating these nationalisms while not mentioning at all the actions in the 1990s by the usa and by his mentor boris y to create artificially nasty nationalisms .
1990s? the cia and mi6 were trying to corral ukretard psychos in the dp camps in 1945. they launched operation cyclone in summer of 1979 to fire up the moslem population of the ussr. they ran the catholic church in poland to destabilize that east-bloc and warsaw pact member. putin wouldn’t be known to anyone outside his immediate family if the americans hadn’t stolen the election for yeltsin in 1996.
ussr collapsed themselves. they had everthing from west of berlin to vladivostok.
they has very bad rule. center saw nothing. they also didnt try to centralize and make local strong power for the communist party.
by that nothing grew prodution and distribution. they also only controled all leaders commanded from moskva were loyal.
by that none dared needed changes/reforms, which very much is trustning responsible people – and help them to work like that for much better results.
your ussr became weaker and weaker by that. by that its normal so look for someting better. i do too. for some time im loyal and hope and then go anywhere else, where fx the vegatabils always fresh. and by that i also buy meat and milk from there.
others – mainly úsa and partly uk(caucasus) sudddenly we very welcome.
you poland is far out. communists has been hated there since russia divided their country away – and even more from the late days of ww2
the hallucinated uneducated dwarf, has less brain cells than a chicken, is retarded to govern the largest flock of sheep in the world, not even the chinese are so sheepish and obedient, they have lived under dictatorship for 100 years