On Tuesday, Tucker Carlson confirmed that he will be interviewing Russian President Vladimir Putin, making him the first Western journalist to do so since the country invaded Ukraine nearly two years ago.
The ex-Fox News commentator shared the news in a statement posted to social media, saying he is doing the interview because “it’s our job.”
“We’re in journalism. Our duty is to inform people,” he said.
Carlson went on to claim that “Western governments will certainly do their best to censor this video,” alleging “that’s what they do.”
Speculation around the interview has grown in recent days as Carlson was spotted around Moscow this week. Telegram channel Mash first reported Carlson being in Moscow, sharing a photo of him at the famous Bolshoi Theater attending the ballet “Spartacus.”
The media outlet said that he has been in the country since Feb. 1.
Kremlin press secretary Dmitry Peskov had declined to comment on the speculation of the interview but did say that it isn’t uncommon for foreign journalists to be in the country.
“Many foreign journalists come to Russia every day, many continue to work here, and we welcome this,” Peskov told the press on Monday, Reuters reported. “We have nothing to announce in terms of the president's interviews to foreign media.”
Though Peskov did respond to one remark that Carlson made in his video, where he said that “not a single Western journalist has bothered to interview Putin.”
Peskov rebutted this, saying that “there’s no way he could know this,” but they “receive numerous requests for interviews with the president.”
In Carlson’s statement, he alleged that the Western media is misleading its audience about the war in Ukraine, going as far as to call the media in the United States “corrupt.”
“They lie to their readers and viewers, and they do that mostly by omission,” Carlson said.
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Carlson did not share specifics on when or how the interview would take place or when it would air.
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