Tucker’s interview with President Putin was preceded by the Mainstream Media (MSM) and the Alt-Media Community (AMC) alike hyping up their audiences with unrealistic expectations. Both predicted that the Russian leader would spew a bunch of talking points, which the former described as propaganda while the latter speculated that they’d crush the West’s reputation, but both were proven wrong. Instead of a simple talk show, President Putin clarified from the start that this would be a serious conversation.
He didn’t waste any time proving his intent either, immediately jumping into a detailed historical review of what can be described as the ‘Ukrainian Question’ between Russia and Poland over the centuries, after which he segued into how this subject was addressed during the Soviet period. The purpose in doing so was to comprehensively inform his audience of the context leading up to the special operation, taking care to explain each side’s motives and nuances in order for them to fully understand everything.
As he approached the end of the Old Cold War, President Putin then reaffirmed Russia’s sincere interests in cultivating a new era of relations with the West, pointing out that that he even once asked Clinton if his country could join NATO and explored joint anti-missile cooperation with Bush Jr. Both initiatives ultimately failed for reasons that he attributed to the American elite’s obsession with dominance, hinting throughout the interview that the CIA is the one that’s really calling the shots on foreign policy.
Instead of mutually beneficial cooperation, the US-led West continued pushing their subjectively defined zero-sum interests at the expense of Russia’s objective national ones, which took the form of expanding NATO eastward in violation of their word and trying to Balkanize Russia in the Northern Caucasus. Even so, President Putin kept pressing on with the vision that he admitted several months ago was naïve in hindsight, which manifested itself through Russia’s actions during “EuroMaidan” and afterwards.
He revealed that former Ukrainian President Yanukovich was told by him to stand down and not use serious force against the armed opposition at the time, being advised to go along with what he himself admitted was a coup through peaceful means via an impromptu round of anti-constitutional elections. In response to his naivete, the CIA completed its armed coup plans despite Germany, France, and Poland acting as guarantors of the aforementioned agreement just the day prior.
That violent regime change prompted Crimea to democratically reunify with its historical homeland after the putschists vowed to oppress Russians, around which time Donbass rebelled and the Ukrainian Civil War broke out after Kiev bombed that region and invaded it. Once again, President Putin preferred peace and pragmatism to war and ultimatums, opting for the Minsk Accords over all else even though the German and French leaders later admitted that they never intended to honor them.
This sequence of events as described by none other than President Putin himself contradicted the MSM and AMC’s expectations of him as a “monster, madman, or mastermind”, revealing him to actually be an apolitical pragmatist with no bloodlust, psychological instability, or ideological motivations whatsoever. The only reason why he commenced the special operation was to ensure the integrity of his country’s national security red lines in Ukraine after NATO clandestinely crossed them and refused to retreat.
There was never any ulterior agenda since he remains committed to the view put forth in his summer 2021 magnum opus that Russians and Ukrainians are the same people that only diverged in superficial ways as a result of external meddling throughout the centuries. That’s why he sought to swiftly end the latest phase of the long-running conflict that his special operation was meant to end shortly after it began via the Istanbul peace process, only to once again be hoodwinked, with all due respect to him.
After President Putin ordered his troops to pull back from Kiev as a goodwill gesture for clinching the agreement that the Ukrainian delegation had already initialed, former British premier Johnson convinced them to scrap that detailed political-military pact in favor of continuing the fight. Nevertheless, the Russian leader still said that he envisages a political end to the conflict, but reminded everyone that Ukraine must first repeal its legislation banning talks with Moscow in order for this to happen.
The world will never be the same whenever this proxy war ends, however, since he believes that it dealt a powerful blow to America’s prior dominance. In fact, a large degree of this was self-inflicted after its elite convinced decisionmakers to attempt to inflict a “strategic defeat” on Russia, which was always a political fantasy. To that end, they even weaponized the dollar, though this backfired by accelerating de-dollarization processes (including among American allies) that in turn undermine the basis of US power.
The emerging Multipolar World Order that’s taking shape should focus on collective security instead of separating into blocs, he said, and he hopes that international law as enshrined in the UN Charter will once again be respected by all with time. AI and genetics should be regulated just like nuclear weapons, though there has to be mutual trust for that to happen, which is obviously lacking. In the interim, pragmatic agreements are possible on other issues like spy swaps, but not much else is expected.
Everything that President Putin spoke about in his interview with Tucker, from the historical background of the ‘Ukrainian Question’ to details about the evolution of Russian policy as well as his interactions with American leaders, subverted the MSM and AMC’s expectations because it wasn’t simple talking points. Quite the opposite, this was a series of master classes on those complex subjects that likely went over the heads of most, but it was still important to discuss for the sake of those who are interested.
The first takeaway for average viewers/readers is that American foreign policy is actually controlled by elite members of its permanent bureaucracy (‘deep state’) such as those in the CIA, not the President, since Clinton and Bush’s initial interests in cooperating with Russia were scuttled by that agency. The second point is that foreign meddling in Ukraine turned the question of its people’s identity into a geopolitical weapon for weakening Russia, which wants to live in peace and prosperity with that country.
Third, President Putin only commenced his country’s special operation after feeling that the failure to do so would lead to irreversible security challenges that risked culminating with time in Russia’s Balkanization, which he explicitly claimed that the West is pursuing as a means of containing China. The fourth point is that it’s this obsession with dominance among its policymaking elite (i.e. CIA) that’s responsible for destabilizing the world, with the final point being that he wants peace via diplomacy.
As was pointed out earlier, he isn’t the monster or madman that the MSM portrays him as, though he also isn’t the anti-Western revolutionary mastermind that the AMC claims either. President Putin is simply an apolitical pragmatist that solely wants to preserve his country’s conservative-nationalist society, robustly develop its economy, and ensure its objective national security interests, all while cooperating with others in pursuit of mutual benefit. He’s neither a villain nor a hero, but just himself.
