Tucker Carlson Interview of Vladimir Putin - Part 6

True Causes of the War including Banderist Ukrainian Nationalist Influences

In part 5 of the Tucker Carlson interview of Russian President Vladimir Putin, Carlson had asked Putin about how the Ukraine War started.

Commentary: The continuous propaganda narrative of the West has been that Russian military intervention in Ukraine on February 24, 2022, was  an “unprovoked invasion.” Putin explained that Ukraine had started the war eight years before, following the February 2014 Maidan Revolution and coup, in which elected President Viktor Yanukovych was deposed by mob violence that led to civil war. Over14,000 people were killed. In this war, the Ukrainian Army ruthlessly attempted to prevent secession of several Russian-speaking oblasts, most notably the two Donbass oblasts of Donetsk and Lugansk. Ukrainian artillery has been responsible for killing at least 5,000 Russian-speaking civilians in the Donetsk oblast alone. The Ukrainian government passed legislation that made Russian-speakers second class citizens and commenced a program of cultural genocide to rid Ukraine of all Russian influence in language, religion, culture, and politics. Only about 60 percent of Ukrainians consider Ukrainian their native language. Nearly 40 percent consider their ethnic and cultural heritage either Russian or mixed Russian and Ukrainian. Putin and Russian leadership also strongly viewed Ukraine becoming a member of NATO as an existential threat to Russian Federation national security.

Vladimiir Putin: Our goal is to stop this war. And we did not start this war in 2022. This is an attempt to stop it.

Tucker Carlson: Do you think you have stopped it now? I mean have you achieved your aims?

Vladimir Putin: No, we haven't achieved our aims yet, because one of them is denazification. This means the prohibition of all kinds of neo-Nazi movements. This is one of the problems that we discussed during the negotiation process, which ended in Istanbul early last year [March 2022], and it was not our initiative, because we were told, by the Europeans, in particular, that ”it was necessary to create conditions for the final signing of the documents“. My counterparts in France and Germany said, ”How can you imagine them signing a treaty with a gun to their heads? The troops should be pulled back from Kiev. ‘I said, ‘All right.’ We withdrew the troops from Kiev. [Commentary: Putin’s withdrawal from the Kyiv area has been widely misinterpreted by Western media. It was not a military retreat. It was a gesture to help achieve a negotiated peace.]

As soon as we pulled back our troops from Kiev, our Ukrainian negotiators immediately threw all our agreements reached in Istanbul into the bin and got prepared for a longstanding armed confrontation with the help of the United States and its satellites in Europe. That is how the situation has developed. And that is how it looks now.

Tucker Carlson: What is denazification? What would that mean?

Vladimir Putin: That is what I want to talk about right now. It is a very important issue.

Denazification. After gaining independence, Ukraine began to search, as some Western analysts say, its identity. And it came up with nothing better than to build this identity upon some false heroes who collaborated with Hitler.

I have already said that in the early 19th century, when the theorists of independence and sovereignty of Ukraine appeared, they assumed that an independent Ukraine should have very good relations with Russia. But due to the historical development, these territories were part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth—Poland, where Ukrainians were persecuted and treated quite brutally as well as were subject to cruel behavior. There were also attempts to destroy their identity. All this remained in the memory of the people. When World War II broke out, part of this extremely nationalist elite collaborated with Hitler, believing that he would bring them freedom. The German troops, even the SS troops made Hitler's collaborators do the dirtiest work of exterminating the Polish and Jewish population. Hence this brutal massacre of the Polish and Jewish population as well as the Russian population too. This was led by the persons who are well known – Bandera, Shukhevich. It was these people who were made national heroes – that is the problem. And we are constantly told that nationalism and neo-Nazism exist in other countries as well. Yes, there are seedlings, but we uproot them, and other countries fight against them. But Ukraine is not the case. These people have been made into national heroes in Ukraine. Monuments to these people have been erected, they are displayed on flags, their names are shouted by crowds that walk with torches, as it was in Nazi Germany. These were the people who exterminated Poles, Jews and Russians. It is necessary to stop this practice and prevent the dissemination of this concept.

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.

Tucker Carlson: Would you be satisfied with the territory that you have now?

Vladimir Putin: I will finish answering the question. You just asked a question about neo-Nazism and denazification.

Look, the President of Ukraine visited Canada. This story is well known, but is silenced in the Western countries: The Canadian parliament introduced a man who, as the speaker of the parliament said, fought against the Russians during the World War II. Well, who fought against the Russians during World War II? Hitler and his accomplices. It turned out that this man served in the SS troops. He personally killed Russians, Poles, and Jews. The SS troops consisted of Ukrainian nationalists who did this dirty work. The President of Ukraine stood up with the entire Parliament of Canada and applauded this man. How can this be imagined? The President of Ukraine himself, by the way, is a Jew by nationality.

Tucker Carlson: Really, my question is: What do you do about it? I mean, Hitler has been dead for eighty years, Nazi Germany no longer exists, and it’s true. So, I think, what you are saying, you want to extinguish or at least control Ukrainian nationalism. But how do you do that?

Vladimir Putin: Listen to me. Your question is very subtle.

And can I tell you what I think? Do not take offense.

Tucker Carlson: Of course!

Vladimir Putin: This question appears to be subtle; it is quite pesky.

You say Hitler has been dead for so many years, 80 years. But his example lives on. People who exterminated Jews, Russians and Poles are alive. And the president, the current president of today's Ukraine applauds him in the Canadian Parliament, gives a standing ovation! Can we say that we have completely uprooted this ideology if what we see is happening today? That is what denazification is in our understanding. We have to get rid of those people who maintain this concept and support this practice and try to preserve it – that is what denazification is. That is what we mean.

Commentary: When Ukraine got its independence as a result of the Soviet Union’s dissolution in 1991, radical nationalist ideas from the 1920s to 1950s re-entered Ukraine’s political mainstream again. This was the legacy of Ukrainian independence leader, Stepan Bandera (1934-1959), who had collaborated with the Nazis during World War 2, including massacres of Jews, Poles, and Russians. In 1941, there were 2.7 million Jews in Ukraine. Since around 2004, ultra-nationalist Ukrainians have become an influential political minority mostly confined to western Ukraine. They advocate for a total break with Russia and the Ukrainianization of the population by purging the culture and any Russian influence that remained—which is immense in eastern and southern Ukraine. Adding economic integration of Ukraine with the West increased the appeal of the modified ideology.

In a March 2015, article entitled, Assisted Suicide, Internal and External Causes of the Ukrainian Crisis, Sergei M. Plekhanov summarizes the views of several authors on  Radical Ukrainian Nationalist ideology:

“Was essentially ethnicist. A pure and inspiring “’national idea’ could only exist as the representation of the spirit of a homogeneous ethnic nation, free from all internal ‘impurity’ and disunity…Ukraine therefore had to be purged of all Jewish, Polish, and above all Russian influence. Moreover, the homogeneous ethnic nation would…be run by a corporate state, with the nationalist political party providing its ‘ruling caste.”

Also according to Plekhanov, “Until the 2014 intervention in the political process, most of the population continued to think of Russia as family. The number of Ukrainians considering Russian their mother tongue actually grew from 27 percent to 40 percent, and even after the catastrophic events of 2014, 60 percent would not support the ideal of Ukraine joining NATO.”

According to a  May 2021 poll by the Razumov Centre, about 32 percent of Ukrainians have a favorable opinion of Bandera. Actual political support for the associated Svoboda (Freedom) Party is probably less than 11 percent. Besides Svoboda, the overlapping activist and ruthless Right Sector and the so-called Azov battalions, regiments, and brigades make up the bulk and heart of Banderist ideology.  Many members of the oligarchic Fatherland Party lean in a Banderist direction. How is it that this radical minority controls the Ukrainian government?  Besides being ruthless, they have the financial backing of powerful oligarchs and the funding and power of the U.S. State Department. In addition, Ukraine is still the most corrupt and bribery-run country in Europe.   

Ukraine’s two top intelligence officers, who report directly to President Zelensky, have been associated with the ruthless nationalism of the Azov brigades. The Azov military and police units report to the Ministry of  Internal Affairs rather the Army. These influential political and intelligence officers  are Lt. General Krylo Budanov, Chief of the SZRU, or foreign military intelligence, and Major General Vasily Malyuk, Chief of the Ukrainian SBU or Secret Service. These are both on Russian Intelligence’s suspected terrorist organizer list, including the recent Crocus massacre of 137 civilians near Moscow by Tajikistan Muslim immigrants allegedly connected to ISIS.     

It should also be noted here that the vast majority of Ukrainian soldiers who fought and died in World War 2 served in the Soviet Red Army.  Probably as many as 2.0 million of the Red Army’s more than 8.7 million soldiers killed fighting Nazi Germany were Ukrainians.

Tucker Carlson answering Putin: Right. My question is almost specific, it was, of course, not a defense of Nazism. Otherwise, it was a practical question. You don't control the entire country; you don’t seem like you want to. So, how do you eliminate that culture, or an ideology, or feelings, or a view of history, in a country that you don’t control? What do you do about that?

Vladimir Putin: You know, as strange as it may seem to you, during the negotiations in Istanbul we did agree that – we have it all in writing – neo-Nazism would not be cultivated in Ukraine, including that it would be prohibited at the legislative level.

Mr. Carlson, we agreed on that. This, it turns out, can be done during the negotiation process. And there is nothing humiliating for Ukraine as a modern civilized State. Is any state allowed to promote Nazism? It is not, is it? That is it.

Tucker Carlson: Will there be talks? And why haven’t there been talks about resolving the conflict in Ukraine? Peace talks.

Vladimir Putin: They have been. They reached a very high stage of coordination of positions in a complex process, but still they were almost finalized. But after we withdrew our troops from Kiev, as I have already said, the other side Ukraine threw away all these agreements and obeyed the instructions of Western countries, European countries and the United States to fight Russia to the bitter end.

Commentary: On April 9, 2022, former UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson arrived in Kyiv to persuade Ukrainian President Zelensky to drop peace negotiations and continue fighting. The official Ukrainian explanation for dropping the negotiated peace agreement was the alleged Bucha Massacre of April 3, 2022. This was not carried out by Russian Army units. It was carried our by Azov units reporting to the Ukrainian Secret Service to punish civilians who had cooperated with or received aid from Russian Army personnel. See my Times Examiner article with references dated April 10, 2023, entitled: A Second Look at the Bucha Massacre—Skepticism about the Ukrainian-NATO Narrative.

Vladimir Putin: Moreover, the President of Ukraine has legislated a ban on negotiating with Russia. He signed a decree forbidding everyone to negotiate with Russia. But how are we going to negotiate if he forbade himself and everyone to do this? We know that he is putting forward some ideas about this settlement. But in order to agree on something, we need to have a dialog. Is not that right?

Tucker Carlson: Well, but you would not be speaking to the Ukrainian president, you would be speaking to the American president. When was the last time you spoke to Joe Biden?

Vladimir Putin: I cannot remember when I talked to him. I do not remember; we can look it up.

Tucker Carlson: You do not remember?! [ Commentary: December 7, 2021, possibly December 30, and January 8, 2022—described by British media as mutual warnings.]

Vladimir Putin: No, why? Do I have to remember everything? I have my own things to do. We have domestic political affairs.

Tucker Carlson: But he is funding the war that you are fighting, so I think that would be memorable?

Vladimir Putin: Well, yes, he funds, but I talked to him before the Special Military Operation, of course. And I said to him then, by the way – I will not go into details, I never do – but I said to him then: ”I believe that you are making a huge mistake of historic proportions by supporting everything that is happening there, in Ukraine, by pushing Russia away.“ I told him, told him repeatedly, by the way. I think that would be correct if I stop here.

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To be continued ...