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Tucker Carlson Interview of Vladimir Putin - Part 8
- Details
- By Mike Scruggs
- Category: Mike Scruggs' Column
The Changing Global Economy, Sanctions, Endangered Dollar, and BRICS

At the end of Part 7, Vladimir Putin was explaining how U.S. driven NATO sanctions on Russia were creating painful economic hardships on the German economy and German people.
Commentary: Although sanctions were a major factor in a 1.2 percent decline in the Russian economy in 2022, Russian economic growth was 3.6 percent in 2023, exceeding the U.S. and most European nations. According to the European Union Commission, Germany is estimated to have had a real GDP contraction of 0.3 percent in 2023, and real growth is not expected to be over 0.3 percent in 2024. In my opinion, this figure is very optimistic considering Germany’s critical energy shortage. European Union economic growth overall was only 0.8 percent. An optimistic projection for 2024 is 1.4 percent. The International Monetary Fund estimates Russian real economic growth for 2024 will be 2.6 percent. There are four major reasons why Russia has prospered despite US/NATO/EU sanctions. First, the Russians had prepared their banking and financial systems for sanctions. Second, they were remarkably successful in shifting their trade to China and other non-NATO nations. Third, the Russians have a very low Debt to GDP ratio of only 12 percent and near zero deficit spending. They are thus in much better fiscal condition than most Western nations. Fourth, they were able to ramp up military-industrial production very quickly, which also gave them significant weapons, ammunition, and logistical advantages over Ukraine and NATO.
Tucker Carlson Interview of Vladimir Putin - Part 7
- Details
- By Mike Scruggs
- Category: Mike Scruggs' Column
US-Russia Relations, Nordstream Sabotage, German Economic Suffering
In Part 6, Tucker Carlson had asked Vladimir Putin what he had told U.S. President Joe Biden several weeks before the Russian Special Military Operation began on February 24, 2022. This contact between Putin and Biden occurred on December 7, 2021, and possibly December 30 and January 8, 2022—described by British media as mutual warnings.
Tucker Carlson: What did he say?
Vladimir Putin: Ask him, please. It is easier for you, you are a citizen of the United States, go and ask him. It is not appropriate for me to comment on our conversation.
Tucker Carlson: But you haven’t spoken to him since before February of 2022? [Since December 2021 and possibly January 8, 2022]
Vladimir Putin: No, we haven't spoken. Certain contacts are being maintained though. Speaking of which, do you remember what I told you about my proposal to work together on a missile defense system?
Tucker Carlson: Yes.
Tucker Carlson Interview of Vladimir Putin - Part 6
- Details
- By Mike Scruggs
- Category: Mike Scruggs' Column
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.
Tucker Carlson Interview of Vladimir Putin - Part 5
- Details
- By Mike Scruggs
- Category: Mike Scruggs' Column
U.S. State Department/CIA Backed Ukrainian Revolutions 2004-5 and 2014
Tucker Carlson: 2014?
Vladimir Putin: Before that [2004-5, See paragraph after my background commentaries.]

Background Commentary 1. Tucker Carlson thought Vladimir Putin was talking about the 2014 coup in Ukraine, which deposed Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, who had been duly elected president in 2010. Yanukovych was a former Prime Minister and Governor of predominantly Russian ethnic Donetsk oblast. He was for Ukrainian military and economic neutrality and good relations with Russia and the European Union. His unconstitutional removal from office is often called the Maidan Revolution, which came with several mass demonstrations on February 18-23, 2014. The largest of these occurred over several days in the Independence Square (Maidan) in Kyiv. There were definitive telephone conversations recorded by Russian Intelligence about two weeks before this, which can still be found on YouTube, that confirm the U.S. State Department approved, largely funded, and encouraged this coup. Thirteen Interior Ministry riot police and 108 civilian demonstrators were killed, a large proportion by snipers firing from at least three buildings, including Hotel Ukrainia, occupied by Svoboda Party members. This coup d’état involved U.S. Under Secretary of State Victoria Nuland, and U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt. Later conversations directly involved pressure on Yanukovych to resign by Vice President Joe Biden. Biden’s VP Defense Advisor, now his Presidential Defense Advisor, Jake Sullivan, was heavily involved. It is logical that this coup had the approval of President Obama.
Belgrade, NATO Expansion, Color Revolutions
- Details
- By Mike Scruggs
- Category: Mike Scruggs' Column
Tucker Carlson’s Interview of Vladimir Putin - Part 4 of a Series

Commentary: In Part 3 of this series, Vladimir Putin spoke about the U.S. bombing of Serbia and its capital city of Belgrade in 1999. Former Russian Federation President Boris Yeltsin had strongly objected to this bombing. but the U.S. and NATO ignored his protests. Over several years, the Serbian province of Kosovo had been overrun by more than 840,000 Albanian Muslim migrants. Much of Kosovo is sacred to the history of the Serbian Orthodox Christian Church. Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic finally ordered Yugoslav/Serbian security forces to expel the migrants. U.S. President Bill Clinton decided to intervene in what was becoming a humanitarian crisis, deciding to bomb the Serbs into submission. About one thousand Serbian security force members were killed as well as at least 489 civilians, including 89 children. The result was Kosovo independence. Kosovo is now 92 percent Albanian and over 96 percent Muslim. Most of the Orthodox Christian Serbs were forced out of their former territory. Kosovo is now less than four percent Serbian Orthodox Christian, concentrated only in the northern edge of the formerly Serbian province.
Mike Scruggs is the author of two books: The Un-Civil War: Shattering the Historical Myths; and Lessons from the Vietnam War: Truths the Media Never Told You, and over 600 articles on military history, national security, intelligent design, genealogical genetics, immigration, current political affairs, Islam, and the Middle East.
He holds a BS degree from the University of Georgia and an MBA from Stanford University. A former USAF intelligence officer and Air Commando, he is a decorated combat veteran of the Vietnam War, and holds the Distinguished Flying Cross, Purple Heart, and Air Medal. He is a retired First Vice President for a major national financial services firm and former Chairman of the Board of a classical Christian school.
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