VLADIMIR PUTIN:

[Mr President, your interview with Tucker Carlson has already garnered one billion views. While there has been a lot of positive feedback, we can see the kind of comments that Western leaders are making. For example, the Prime Minister of the UK and the German Chancellor labelled your explanation that the special military operation had been caused by a threat from NATO as ‘absurd’ and ‘clearly ridiculous.’ What do you think of this?]

“First of all, it is good that they have been watching and listening to what I say.

If we are not able to maintain a direct dialogue today due to certain reasons, we should be grateful to Mr Carlson for acting as an intermediary.

So, it is good that they are watching and listening.

The fact that they are distorting my words and misrepresenting things is concerning.

Why? Because I never said those things.

Nowhere in the interview did I say that the start of the special military operation in Ukraine is linked to the threat of a NATO attack on Russia.

Where in the interview did I make such a statement? The interview was recorded. They can go back and pinpoint exactly where I said this.

What I actually said was that we have been constantly deceived about NATO’s non-expansion to the east.

By the way, then NATO Secretary-General, a representative of Germany, made such a promise. He explicitly stated NATO would not expand even an inch to the east.

After that, NATO proceeded to expand five times, completely deceiving us. Of course, we were concerned about the possibility of Ukraine being drawn into NATO, as it poses a security threat to us.

So, this is what I actually said.

However, what served as the trigger was the current Ukrainian officials’ outright refusal to comply with the Minsk agreements, coupled with Ukraine’s relentless attacks on the unrecognised republics of Donbass, the Donetsk People’s Republic and the Lugansk People’s Republic, which continued for eight years and resulted in numerous deaths.

Realising that there are no prospects of resolving this problem under the Minsk agreements, these republics formally requested our recognition.

We recognised them and signed a treaty of friendship and mutual assistance. After that, as required by the UN Charter, we fulfilled our obligations under the treaty.

As I said, we did not initiate this war; rather, we are striving to end it.

During the first phase, we tried to achieve this through peaceful means, specifically, through the Minsk agreements.

However, it became apparent that we had been given the runaround once again.

Both the former German Chancellor and the former President of France admitted and publicly stated that they had never intended to honour the agreements and had merely used them to buy time to supply the Ukrainian regime with more weapons, which they successfully did.

Our only regret is that we did not take action sooner, believing that we were dealing with honest people.”