In this DisinfoDigest, we look at the February 2023 Tucker Carlson interview with Vladimir Putin, and the multiple disinformation and conspiracy theories that Putin advanced during the 2 hour marathon session.
We’ll also look at fake BBC videos that have been posted to Twitter/X to advance Russian government narratives
The Tucker Carlson Interview With Vladimir Putin
US far-right populist talk show host, Tucker Carlson, visited Moscow in early February to conduct an interview with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Throughout the interview, which lasted over two hours, Carlson allowed Putin to reiterate many of the Kremlin’s disinformation narratives used to justify its invasion of Ukraine unchallenged, along with its extensive grievances against Western democracies and NATO.
Since its initial airing, the interview has amassed nearly 210 million views on Twitter/X, providing an international platform for Putin to freely disseminate his propaganda to a substantial far-right audience in the US without questioning or any significant challenges. This unopposed exposure marks a notable victory for the Kremlin in the information domain.
In the first hour of the interview, Putin presented a rambling history lecture to viewers about Russian history. He argued that Ukraine lacks the legitimacy to exist as a nation and justified Russia’s invasion as an effort to reclaim its historical borders.
Throughout the discussion, Putin echoed numerous disinformation tactics employed by the Kremlin to justify the invasion. These included denying that Russia had invaded Ukraine and claiming that Russian forces were in Ukraine to end the war. Additionally, he claimed that Russia’s military operations aimed to “de-Nazify” the Ukrainian government and that NATO’s enlargement was responsible for his regime’s aggression.
Below are some of the leading falsehoods that Tucker Carlson allowed Putin to advance during his interview:
Putin Accuses Ukraine of Starting the War
In another segment of the video, Vladimir Putin falsely accused Ukraine of starting wars in 2014 and again in 2022, and then falsely claimed that Russia was fighting the war to end the war. None of these statements are remotely true. Russia illegally annexed Crimea and invaded Ukraine in February 2014. In July 2014, Russian militants even shot down a commercial airliner, MH17, with a Russian government supplied anti-aircraft missile, killing 283 passengers. Russia again invaded Ukraine in 2022 without any provocation. The surreal suggestion, made by Vladimir Putin, that Russia is attacking Ukraine to stop the war is beyond Orwellian.
“The promise was that NATO would not expand Eastward”
In addition to denying Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, he also claimed that Russia is defending itself from NATO, and that the Western world lied to Russia about the alliance’s enlargement. In his interview with Carlson, Putin claims that Russia was “tricked” by the West and that there was a promise that “NATO would not expand eastward.”
NATO never made any commitment, neither formal nor verbal, to deny application for membership to any nation. NATO’s Article 10 enshrines an open door membership policy for any nation that chooses to become a member of the defensive alliance. Membership was offered to the current member states from Eastern Europe, because they freely applied for membership, met membership criteria. They faced no external pressure to become members of NATO.
The late former Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev has publicly stated that there was no discussion or commitment to deny NATO membership for any Eastern European nations in an interview published by a Russian state media controlled outlet “Russia behind the Headlines” in 2014.
Putin Falsely Accuses Poland of Starting WWII
In one of the most bizarre segments of the interview, Vladimir Putin accused Poland of starting WWII for failing to acquiesce to Hitler’s demands to hand over the city of Gdansk to Nazi Germany.
On August 23, 1939, Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia signed a pact that carved up Central and Eastern Europe between them, and enabled their coordinated attacks on Poland and the start of WWII in Septmeber 1939. Hitler and Stalin shared a neo-imperialist vision of conquest over Poland and Eastern Europe. The invasion of Poland was pre-arranged by Hitler and Stalin.
Putin Repeats “De-Nazification” Conspiracy Claim
In February 2022, Vladimir Putin justified his invasion of Ukraine as a “three-day operation to de-Nazify” Ukraine. Ukraine’s president, Volodomyr Zelensky does not belong to a far-right political party nor has he ever made any statements or engaged in any activity that could be remotely considered “neo-Nazi.” And unlike most other European parliaments, including Germany, France, Hungary and others, including Russia, not a single far-right party holds a seat in Ukraine’s parliament.
The Russian neo-Nazi accusation has been used to label the critics of the Kremlin, going back to WWII and the Cold War. This accusation holds no relevance as a justification for Russia’s attack on Ukraine, the killing of tens of thousands of innocent Ukrainian civilians, the mass destruction of civilian infrastructure and the well documented crimes against Ukrainians, including rape, torture and murder and the kidnapping and forced deportation of 20,000 Ukrainian children from territories illegally occupied by Russia.
Fake pro-Kremlin BBC Videos
Over the past year, fake videos have been posted to Twitter/X claiming to be BBC reports about investigations by the renowned UK based, open source intelligence investigative team at Bellingcat. These videos focus on spreading false narratives about Ukraine.
In early March a video that claimed Ukrainian General Valerii Zulezhniy, accepted a $53 million severance package ahead of his appointment as Ukrainian ambassador to the United Kingdom. The video falsely claims that renowned journalist, Christo Grozev of the UK based open source intelligence investigative team, Bellingcat, “discovered” the payment and that the scheme was part of a UK intelligence operation.
In response, Grozev posted to Twitter/X:
“Russian intelligence continue producing cheap-fakes (in addition to deep-fakes) impersonating legitimate media. This time, a poorly scripted “BBC” video story in Kremlish, alleging that I discovered Zaluzhny got a bribe. I don’t know who this is meant for, it’s so bad.”
This narrative is intended to amplify and reinforce Russian state disinformation and conspiracies about corruption and to provoke political division.
A similar fake BBC video was published to Twitter in December 2023, claiming that “A Ukrainian politician may be involved in arms sales to Hamas.” Russian false narratives about western weapons being sold off on the black market have been circulating since Russia’s latest invasion of Ukraine and were exposed by the BBC in September 2022. Images of western weapons were attached to fake ads that were alleged to be selling US made FGM-148 Javelin anti-tank missile systems, for $30,000 and promised to deliver them to buyers at the Ukraine-Poland border or beyond. Not surprisingly, these fake ads posts were picked up and reported on by Russian state media.
This Russian narrative has been echoed on RT and in by far-left and far-right influencers on social media.
Alexey Navalny Conspiracies and Attacks Against Yulia Navalnaya
On February 16 2024, Russian opposition and anti-corruption activist Alexei Navalny collapsed and died in a maximum security prison in the Russian Arctic. Russia’s state prison service claimed that Navalny had lost consciousness and could not be resuscitated.
Navalny had been in prison for over two years. He was detained after returning to Russia from Germany in January 2021, where he was recuperating from an attempt to assassinate him with poison in August 2020. Upon his arrest in Moscow, mass protests broke out throughout Russia in support of Navalny – causing significant concern in the Kremlin and resulting in a violent crackdown and the arrests of thousands of protesters.
Russian and Western human rights and civil society activists have almost universally blamed the Kremlin for Navalny’s death. The mistreatment of political prisoners by the Putin regime is well documented. Russian anti-corruption whistle-blower, Sergei Magnitsky, was neglected and beaten during his detention in 2008 and died as a result in November 2009. The fact that Russian authorities delayed their handover of Navalny’s body to his family raises additional questions.
In order to suppress his potential “martydom”, the Kremlin immediately undertook a campaign to suppress Navalny’s legacy and to attack his colleagues and family, including his wife, Yulia Navalnaya.
Russian diplomat, Dmitry Polyanskiy, published a wild suggestion on Twitter/X claiming that anti-Putin forces may have conspired to kill Navalny.
Multiple conspiracies suggesting that Western intelligence killed Navalny emerged on Twitter. One account claimed that:
“Alexey Navalny was no Russian dissident. He was a US/UK intelligence asset. He was liquidated when it suited the narrative the CIA/MI6 was pursuing. Anyone too ignorant to do a bit of basic research about this might want to STFU.”
Among the Kremlin-aligned conspiracies were claims suggesting Yulia Navalnaya and “her boyfriend” were responsible for Navalny’s death, Ukrainian intelligence assassinated Navalny to gain access to the stalled $60 billion US aid package for Ukraine, and that Navalny was killed by a COVID vaccine.
Russian nationalist extremist talk show host, Vladimir Solovyov, echoed some of these conspiracies, asserting that the West was the only beneficiary of Navalny’s death. He even proposed that Navalny’s assassination was orchestrated to divert attention from “the fantastic effect” of Tucker Carlson’s interview with Putin.
Solovyov also cautioned that Yulia Navalnaya would meet the same fate as her husband should she decide to continue Alexey Navalny’s efforts.
Yulia Navalnaya was directly targeted in attacks within hours of her husband’s death, including manipulated images of Ms Navalnaya with an exiled Russian millionaire, Yevgeny Chichvarkin, suggesting infidelity. A widely shared photo on social media appears to show Ms Navalnaya embracing Yevgeny Chichvarkin. The original photo, which accompanied a 2013 article about Alexey Navalny being released on bail (below).
Stories that seek to connect Navalnaya romantically to other men including Chichvarkin –have been published to several Russian propaganda and disinformation pltatforms including pravda-fr.com, pravda-en.com and pravda-de.com.
