Russian President Vladimir Putin sat down in the Kremlin for a two-hour interview with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, rattling off his version of Russian history on the justification for the nearly 2-year-old war in Ukraine, the prospects of peace talks, and other issues. Let’s take a look at some key quotes from Putin, supplying context and background:
Tucker began the interview by asking the most obvious question, which is, why did Putin do this? And the answer he got shocked everybody. Putin went on for a very long time, probably half an hour, about the history of Russia going back to the 8th century. Putin traced the roots of Russian statehood back to the 8th century, emphasizing the historical claim to parts of Western Ukraine. He discussed the origins of the Russian state, starting from the invitation of the Varangian prince Rurik to Novgorod in 862, leading to the establishment of centralized statehood in Russia.
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He highlighted the significant date of 988, the baptism of Rus’, which solidified the centralized Russian state through shared territory, economy, language, and faith under Prince Vladimir.
“The next very significant date in the history of Russia was 988. This was the baptism of Russia when Prince Vladimir, the great-grandson of Rurik, baptized Russia and adopted orthodoxy or eastern Christianity. From this time, the centralized Russian state began to strengthen. Why? Because of the single territory integrated economic size, one and the same language, and after the baptism of Russia, the same faith and rule of the prince. The centralized Russian state began to take shape.”
He then talked about the fragmentation of the Rus’ state, making it vulnerable to the Mongol invasion, and the subsequent re-centralization of Russian lands with Moscow as the nucleus.
He went on to describe how parts of Russian lands gravitated towards the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and later the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, leading to efforts of colonization and Russification by the Poles.
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“The southern part of Russian lands, including Kiev, began to gradually gravitate towards another magnet, the center that was emerging in Europe. This was the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. It was even called the Lithuanian Russian Duchy because Russians were a significant part of this population. They spoke the old Russian language and were
Orthodox. But then there was a unification, the union of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Kingdom of Poland,” said Putin.
He asserts historical claims based on treaties and decisions from as far back as the 13th century, referring to moments when parts of what is now Ukraine sought to be under Moscow’s rule, specifically mentioning the Treaty of Pereyaslav in 1654.
The Treaty of Pereyaslav in 1654 was a pivotal moment in Eastern European history, reshaping the region’s geopolitics. Signed between Zaporozhian Cossack leader Bohdan Khmelnytsky and Russian Tsar Alexis, it followed Cossack discontent under Polish rule. In exchange for Russian military protection, the Cossacks pledged allegiance to the Tsar. The treaty triggered the Russo-Polish War, resulting in eastern Ukraine under Russian control and the west returning to Polish rule. The Cossack Hetmanate retained autonomy but succumbed to gradual erosion under Russian influence, setting the stage for future tensions in the region.
This prompted Tucker to pose a direct question to Putin. He questioned “May I ask, you’re making the case that Ukraine, certainly parts of Ukraine, Eastern Ukraine, is in effect Russia. Has been for hundreds of years. Why wouldn’t you just take it when you became President twenty-four years ago? You have nuclear weapons, they don’t. If it’s actually your land, why did you wait so long?”
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Then Putin discussed the formation of Soviet Ukraine within the USSR, mentioning that certain territories were added to Ukraine that had no historical connection to it, emphasizing the arbitrariness of modern Ukrainian borders post-1991.
“After the victory in the Great Patriotic war, as we call World War II, all those territories were ultimately enshrined as belonging to Russia, to the USSR.”
“In 1922, when the USSR was being established, the Bolsheviks started building the USSR and established the Soviet Ukraine, which had never existed before. Stalin insisted that those republics be included in the USSR as autonomous entities. For some inexplicable reason, Lenin, the founder of the Soviet State, insisted that they be entitled to withdraw from the USSR. And again, for some unknown reasons, he transferred to that newly established Soviet Republic of Ukraine, some of the lands together with people living there, even though those lands had never been called Ukraine, and yet they were made part of that Soviet Republic of Ukraine,” said Putin.
Putin frames the military intervention in Ukraine as a response to protect the Russian-speaking population and historical Russian territories from what he perceives as a hostile Ukrainian government and the expansion of NATO.
He criticized the West and Ukraine for not adhering to the Minsk agreements meant to resolve the conflict in Donbas and accused NATO countries of threatening Russia’s security by attempting to incorporate Ukraine into NATO.
According to Putin, Russia tried to build relations in different ways. For example, the events in the Middle East in Iraq.
“We were building relations with the United States in a very soft, prudent, cautious manner. I repeatedly raised the issue that the United States should not support separatism or terrorism in the North Caucasuses, but they continued to do it anyway.”
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Then there was a moment when the US missile defense system was created which irked Russia to its core. The beginning.
“We were persuaded for a long time not to do it in the United States. I proposed that the
The United States, Russia and Europe jointly create a missile defense system that we believe if created unilaterally threatens our security.”
As the United States proceeded independently with the missile defense program, Russia’s patience began to wear thin, signaling a turning point in its relationship with the US and NATO. The culmination of these escalations has resulted in the world finding itself entangled in a full-blown warlike scenario.