Nearly 10 months after his interview with Russian President Vladimir Putin, right-wing media personality Tucker Carlson on Tuesday announced he returned to Moscow for a sit-down with the country’s foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov.
In a video posted on his account on X, formerly Twitter, Carlson described their chat as “absolutely fascinating.”
“It’s coming very soon,” he said. “We hope you’ll watch.”
Carlson claimed his interview with Lavrov, a member of Putin’s inner circle, was part of his effort to provide his audience with the “Russian perspective.”
“We’ve been trying for over a year to get that perspective out to American news consumers,” he said.
The former Fox News host has repeatedly accused American news media of promoting pro-Ukraine “propaganda.” Meanwhile, Carlson has widely condemned U.S. efforts to fund Ukraine and often echoed Russian talking points.
Still, Carlson expressed disappointment that he has unsuccessfully tried to secure an interview with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy for the past 12 months.
“We’ve been in talks continuously and those efforts have been thwarted by the U.S. government,” Carlson said.
Carlson suggested that his inability to talk to Zelenskyy prompted his decision to return to Moscow to interview Lavrov instead.
Maria Zakharova, a spokesperson for Russia’s foreign ministry, told Sputnik that the two men discussed a range of topics, including Ukraine, according to a translation provided by Politico.
Their chat went over “the modern, recent history of our difficult relations with the United States, the impact of all this on world geopolitics, the possibilities of the future state of affairs,” Zakharova said.
In his video on X, Carlson also accused the Biden administration of driving the U.S. “ever closer to a nuclear conflict with Russia,” criticizing President Joe Biden for green-lighting Ukrainians’ request to use U.S.-supplied longer-range missiles to strike deeper inside Russia.
“We are, unbeknownst to most Americans, in a hot war with Russia,” Carlson claimed.
Prior to Lavrov, Carlson sat down with Putin in February. Carlson was widely condemned for his interview with the Russian leader in which he at times let Putin deliver lengthy monologues without any pushback.
Even Putin himself appeared surprised by how soft the interview was.
“To be honest, I thought that he would behave aggressively and ask so-called sharp questions,” he told Russian TV’s Pavel Zarubin, according to a Reuters translation. “I was not just prepared for this, I wanted it, because it would give me the opportunity to respond in the same way.”