In a rare sit-down interview, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov spoke with Tucker Carlson, during the controversial former Fox News host’s visit to Moscow.
Carlson is a staunch ally of US President-elect Trump and has frequently been accused of disseminating anti-Ukrainian talking points while amplifying Russian propaganda.
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Earlier this year, Carlson became the first US journalist to interview Russian President Vladimir Putin since Russia’s 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and was lambasted for his timidity in questioning the Russian leader.
Released on Dec. 6, the conversation with Lavrov covered Russia’s relationship with the United States, the ongoing war in Ukraine, and controversial topics such as opposition figure Alexei Navalny’s death.
Are Russia and the US at war?
Despite Russian officials repeatedly claiming that they are at war with the “collective West,” and Putin himself claiming that “they [the West] are our enemy,” Lavrov was quick to mitigate the notion that Russia considers itself at war with the United States. “I wouldn’t say so,” he told Carlson, adding that Russia wants normal relations with all countries, especially “a great nation like the United States.”
“President Putin repeatedly expressed his respect for the American people, for the American history, for the American achievements in the world, and we don't see any reason why Russia and the United States cannot cooperate for the sake of Universe,” Lavrov said.
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Lavrov hedged his comments by saying that Russia and the US are “officially not at war,” saying that it is rather a “hybrid war.” He criticized Washington for supplying long-range weapons to Ukraine, such as ATACMS missiles, calling it a serious escalation.
Carlson noted that the reason might be the fact that the “United States is funding the conflict Russia is involved in and allowing attacks on Russia itself.”
“It is obvious that Ukrainians wouldn’t be able to do what they are doing with the long-range modern weapons without direct participation of the American serviceman.”
Nuclear saber-rattling
Lavrov said he hopes the West took “seriously” Moscow’s recent use of a hypersonic missile in Ukraine, and warned that Russia was ready to use “any means” to defend itself.
The United States and its allies “must understand that we would be ready to use any means not to allow them to succeed in what they call strategic defeat of Russia,” Lavrov said.
Two weeks ago, in a major escalation of the almost three-year war, Russia fired its new Oreshnik hypersonic missile on the Ukrainian city of Dnipro.
“We are sending signals and we hope that the last one, a couple of weeks ago, the signal with the new weapons system called Oreshnik... was taken seriously,” Lavrov said.
Fact Check: “Russia wasn’t the one who started the war, Ukraine was.”
In a blatant contradiction of facts on the ground, Russia’s foreign minister rehashed the Kremlin’s basic propaganda narrative that Ukraine had initiated the war.
“Putin repeatedly said that we started this operation to end the war, which Kyiv regime was conducting against its own people in the eastern parts of Donbas. And just in his latest statement, the President indicated that we are ready for any eventuality, but we strongly prefer a peaceful solution through negotiations,” Lavrov said.
Lavrov pointed out that Russia is striving for a settlement that will “respect the people of Ukraine” or, as he added, “people who still live in Ukraine, being Russians.”
He added: “Their basic human rights, language rights, religious rights have been exterminated by a series of legislations, passed by the Ukrainian parliament.”
By contrast, observers on the ground and even virulent Russian nationalists such as former Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin, whom the Kremlin likely assassinated, called out the Russian lies with regard to Moscow’s Donbas narrative.
“The ministry of defense is trying to deceive the public and the President and spin the story that there were insane levels of aggression from the Ukrainian side and that they were going to attack us together with the whole NATO block,” the Wagner head said in June 2023, shortly before his plane mysteriously exploded in mid-air.
Blame on the US and NATO
Lavrov, one of the world’s most seasoned diplomats, was generous in his distribution of blame. He accused the US of dragging the world back into a Cold War – only this time with a higher risk of outright conflict.
According to him, Washington is using NATO to tighten its grip on Europe, undermining past security agreements.
In reality, it was Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine that spurred Finland and Sweden to abandon their position of non-alliance and seek protection from NATO, despite US reluctance to strongarm recalcitrant members such as Hungary and Turkey.
Russia’s conditions for peace
Describing what such a peace deal could look like, the top Russian diplomat said, among other demands, Kyiv would have to accept Russia’s claim of control over the regions of Donetsk, Lugansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia. Yet three of those regions – Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia – are not even fully controlled by Russia.
“They are now part of the Russian Federation according to the constitution and this is a reality,” Lavrov said.
Lavrov also stuck to Russia’s long-standing demands:
- No NATO membership for Ukraine.
- Closing all Western military bases on Ukrainian soil.
- Ending military drills involving foreign forces.
Lavrov repeated the Kremlin’s claim that Moscow has no plans to “destroy” the Ukrainian people, whom he described as “brothers and sisters” to Russians.
This nuanced statement, however, arguably contradicts Putin’s seminal screed “On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians,” which articulated the ideological foundations of his attempt to re-subsume the “fictitious” Ukrainian nation under Moscow’s control.
Trump vs. Biden
Lavrov described US President-elect Donald Trump, who takes office in January and has vowed to swiftly end the war without explaining how he would do so, as a “strong person.”
“I think he’s a very strong person, a person who wants results, who doesn’t like procrastination on anything,” he said.
This echoed Carlson’s own admiration for Trump and his criticism of Joe Biden.
Carlson accused Biden of pushing the US closer to nuclear conflict with Russia and claimed there’s a complete lack of diplomatic communication between the two nations.
The Navalny controversy
Carlson also brought up the death of Russian opposition figure Alexei Navalny, who died in prison earlier this year – a topic that was conspicuously absent in Carlson’s previous interview with Putin, shortly before Navalny’s death.
Lavrov deflected blame, suggesting Germany had withheld key medical information from Navalny’s poisoning in 2020.
“They [Germans] announced that the analysis confirmed that he was poisoned. We asked for the test results to be given to us. They said no, we’ll give it to the organization on chemical weapons. We went to this organization – we are members – and we said, ‘Can you show it to us? Because this is our citizen, and we’re accused of having poisoned him.’ They said, ‘The Germans told us not to give it to you,’” Lavrov said.
Lavrov implied there might have been foul play during Navalny’s treatment in Germany but offered no solid evidence.
He said that the blood test conducted in the civilian hospital “found nothing,” and then test results were “made up” after Navalny had already been transported to the military hospital.
Alexey Navalny died on Feb. 16 in the Polar Wolf penal colony in the village of Harp, located in the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug. The official cause of death was reported as natural causes, but Navalny’s supporters suspect he was murdered.
Despite Lavrov’s attempt to deflect accusations, a voluminous joint CNN-Bellingcat investigation appeared to implicate the FSB directly in Navalny’s poisoning.
Interview with Putin
In February 2024, Tucker Carlson traveled to Moscow for a high-profile interview with Russian President Vladimir Putin, an event that received extensive coverage in Russian state media.
During the interview, as several media outlets observed, Carlson appeared to fawn over the Russian leader, mainly listening as Putin delivered a monologue detailing his personal views on the history of Ukraine. Critics of Carlson accused him of enabling Moscow’s narrative and portraying Putin’s policies in a more favorable light.
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