So Tucker Carlson had a two hour long interview with Vladimir Putin. And I watched it all. And I felt like discussing it.
It was kind of interesting. Even if I obviously dont agree with putin i agree in freedom of speech and press enough to make this happen and i do believe the dude is entitled to his own perspective, no matter how full of crap that it is.
And as far as him being full of crap...yeah, he is. You can value freedom of speech of someone while also believing that the person is a blow hard, and to sum it up, that's my view of putin here.
He started off the interview giving a 20 minute lecture into the entire history of russia going back to the 800s. TLDR, borders changed, russia had constant backs and forths with germany and poland over the years, and Ukraine never existed as a state until under the USSR. Ukraine was considered a bit of a border area of Russia, and Ukraine literally does mean "borderlands" or something like that.
But yeah, apparently the commies were somewhat sympathetic to a nationalist movement to allow ukraine to be its own state under the USSR and because the USSR had tons of states from tons of land that never formally belonged to russia, they kinda let them do their thing semi autonomously. And the argument is that the state of ukraine was relatively new and not a historical thing.
To which I say, who cares? I mean, interesting history lesson. But I already kind of addressed this with israel. I dont care much about historical land claims going back to the 800s. I care about the last 40-80 years or so. Because I care about events that happened in the lifetime of the people living there. And Ukraine, coming into existence in the early days of the USSR, is old enough to be formally recognized. And the borders are what they've been since the USSR fell apart in the 90s. And yeah. Most people are happy with that. And most Ukrainians want independence. And that's fine. That's what they want. I dont care if the land was originally part of russia or not, due to historical factors, it no longer is, get over it. We're dealing with this now in the 2020s.
Okay, so next point. He then goes into the post USSR days. He frames Russia very favorably, talking about his they dissolved the USSR voluntarily, and how the west promised not to expand NATO or they would have problems, and then they did. And it was very revisionisty. I remember this talking point coming out in 2022, and I could find no factual basis for it. And if anything most states joined NATO seeking protection from russia, as every time russia got a bit violent, people started becoming concerned about being invaded so they joined NATO as protection.
Of course, putin blames all aggression on the west. I dont deny our national security state can be a bit paranoid and maybe didnt trust russia and that could lead to misunderstandings and tensions, but honestly, I could very well see that they just saw through russia's actions and didnt trust them for good reason. Putin is kinda scummy. Like he talked about he asked to join NATO and after talking to the national security state, Bill Clinton said no. But then let everyone else in. He seemed a bit bitter about it.We probably didnt let him in because we didnt trust him, or didnt think his state was legitimately democratic.
Of course, Im not gonna say my side is innocent with provocations. I can see how missile defense in poland was seen as threatening to russia and unnecessarily aggressive. I remember being against it at the time because it seemed to be provocative for no good reason. Although in retrospect I'm more in favor of it because F russia at this point.
And yeah a lot of the interview went on like this. With Russia going on about how the US is gonna fall apart because of the national debt and the weakness of the dollar and blah blah blah and he just seems to have an overly inflated idea of his own country and thinks the US is teetering on the brink of falling apart. It comes off as a bunch of delusional fear mongering to me.
He mentioned Nazis in Ukraine. And to counter this, yes, I know of the Azov batallion. My understanding was Ukraine decided to let just ANYONE form a state backed militia and then a neo nazi group decided to do so. It was unfortunate that it happened but it doesnt make ukraine a nazi state. And let's face it, every state has a fascism problem. Even russia. I've seen nazi tattoos on a lot of his wagner group boys. And of course we got neo nazis here in the US too. It's kind of a natural result of a country having freedom. Some people are going to be crapheads. As long as they dont run the entire government, it's nto a problem if a negligible minority behaves that way. Putin is USING that issue in order to justify attacking Ukraine and it's obviously exploitative.
And yeah. I could go on and on, but it's getting late, and honestly, you get the idea.
Honestly, I cant say this was a waste of time because as I said, I believe even a scumbag like putin is entitled to his views, and I believe he deserves as much of a platform as anyone else, but at the same time, the dude is kind of a lying scumbag who told an incredibly biased account of events that made his country look good and the west look bad, and idk what else I was expecting. Basically the same russian propaganda putin has been pushing since 2022. You can watch the link above, but yeah, that's the gist of it.
Slava Ukraini. Sorry. Just had to end it that way. Because that's my honest opinion on that war.
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