Ukrainian president Vladimir Zelensky snubbed multiple invitations by US journalist Tucker Carlson for an interview, the former Fox News host has revealed.
Carlson recently recorded a lengthy interview with Russian President Vladimir Putin, a first by a Western reporter since the conflict with Ukraine began, in which they discussed the ongoing hostilities and Moscow’s standoff with NATO. The exchange went viral globally, with over 200 million views on X (formerly Twitter) alone. Carlson then announced his intention to offer Zelensky a similar platform.
The journalist revealed his attempts to contact Zelensky in a video on Wednesday. In a monologue before his interview with Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, Carlson said he had invited House Speaker Mike Johnson to explain why he wants Congress to “fund a doomed war.”
“Of course, he hasn’t responded,” the journalist explained,“we also sent multiple requests to Zelensky himself for an interview to explain his position. Of course, he ignored that as well.”
He went on to argue that, no matter how much foreign money Kiev receives, it cannot defeat Moscow on the battlefield, given Russia’s larger population and industrial capacity.
“It’s not working. Two years in, the war is still going,” Carlson said. “Ukraine can’t win. Everybody knows that around the world. People are very clear on that. There is not one informed person outside the United States who thinks that somehow Ukraine is going to beat Russia.”
A vocal critic of Zelensky, Carlson has accused US news organizations of not being truthful about the origins and nature of the conflict. He noted that media bias was one of the reasons he wanted to sit down with Putin in the first place.
In the interview with Carlson in Moscow in February, Putin reflected on the centuries of shared history between Russia and Ukraine, and stressed that he has no intention of attacking NATO unless Russia is attacked first. Zelensky dismissed the interview as “more than two hours of bulls**t.”
The Ukrainian leadership has increasingly attempted to pressure Western countries to provide more military aid in an effort to reverse the tide after a string of battlefield losses. Kiev has been frustrated by US House Republicans who refuse to back President Joe Biden’s $61 billion aid package, which has been stuck in Congress for several months.