Vladimir Putin always likes to behave like the tough guy. In a February 14 interview, he sounded like a boxer disappointed that his sparring partner had been such a poor match.
“I honestly thought he would be aggressive and ask so-called sharp questions,” he told state television’s Pavel Zarubin. “And I wasn’t just ready for that, I wanted it, because it would have given me the opportunity to respond sharply in kind . . . But he [Carlson] chose a different tactic.”
The sense of Kremlin disappointment was clear. And this was no doubt echoed by Putin’s senior staff in their regular behind-the-scenes meetings where propagandists are given their lines to repeat.
The days before the big interview on February 8 (it clocked in at more than two hours) were a time of gleeful anticipation for the leader’s information machine.
The big-name pro-Kremlin propagandists predicted that it would have an immediate impact, disrupting the upcoming US presidential elections and changing public opinion in the West. Their excitement was all too apparent, with RT head Margarita Simonovna taking credit for organizing the meeting and later revealing that it had made her cry.
Understandably perhaps. The softball sit-down was lambasted the world over as an exercise in futility and for offering a bored planet an unwanted lecture in Putin’s brand of twisted history.
It’s fair to say that more people have now heard of Prince Ryurik and Yaroslav the Wise because of Putin’s initial, rambling 32-minute answer, but perhaps not in the way the Kremlin had hoped.
The Kremlin likes to say that Russia is a great power standing apart (and often above) the West, and yet it has a near-obsession with the contours of debate in the free world’s media.
Putin openly acknowledged that he had followed the West’s post-interview debate when he arranged the Valentine’s Day discussion with Zarubin.
The broadcast was perhaps a version of how Putin would like the interview to have gone and was (with tedious predictability) applauded by his propaganda staffers. But if he thought this second bite of the cherry would create the headlines that Carlson had failed to generate, he was wrong.
The Russian leader agreed with former US President Donald Trump’s views about NATO, stating, “I personally believe that there is absolutely no point in NATO. Its only purpose is to serve as a tool of US foreign policy. If the United States considers this tool no longer necessary, that is their decision.”
At the same time, Putin blamed the Biden administration for allegedly “pursuing what amounts to a harmful and erroneous policy.”
These comments made Putin’s stance on this year’s US Presidential vote as clear as day, and it was in perfect alignment with his loyal state TV propagandists and experts. They have repeatedly pined for the return of Trump, as “the destroyer of America,” and their best hope that the US will retreat from the world stage and focus in on itself, thereby giving the Kremlin a free hand.
In all likelihood, Carlson didn’t ask whether Putin prefers Trump because the answer was too obvious. And yet, as Putin’s follow-up interview demonstrated, that was a question that he did want to answer — for nefarious reasons.
Putin, the former KGB agent, does have some grasp of the world he inhabits, and his disinformation is pitched accordingly. After starting the biggest land war in Europe since World War II, Russia has become so toxic that Putin’s praise inevitably taints its recipient.
So when Putin told Zarubin that Biden would be better for Russia than Trump, it might have seemed to be a subtle piece of manipulation. Except that minutes before, he had been condemning his policies. Even the most credulous propaganda consumer could hear the sound of screeching tires as Putin executed his 180-degree turn.
The unsubtlety continued. His propagandists immediately gave the game away by extolling this move as a top-notch disinformation gambit and sycophantically praised the boss’s unsurpassed tradecraft.
When some media outlets said that Putin was merely “trolling” when he claimed to prefer Biden, Russia’s No. 1 Kremlin mouthpiece, Vladimir Solovyov, used his TV show, The Evening With Vladimir Solovyov, to argue.
“This was the first time the president of the Russian Federation said whom we prefer [as the US president]. They say it’s trolling. No, this is not trolling. It’s a precise calculation.”
Political scientist Dmitry Kulikov noted: “I like how [Putin] is working them. Yesterday, it gave me pleasure watching his interview with Pavel Zarubin. The president said he wasn’t pleased about his conversation with Tucker Carlson, but I was pleased with this one.”
Kulikov suggested the second interview was designed to supplement the Carlson flop since the fired Fox News fanboy was simply overwhelmed by the presence of the great man: “It included topics not covered by Tucker — or questions he couldn’t figure out how to ask, because he was in such a state of shock.”
During Solovyov’s February 14 morning show, he described Putin’s comments about Biden and Trump as “a large number of carefully placed info-bombs and mines.”
Professor Dmitry Evstafiev added: “Russia is often being criticized for its inability to wage information wars. Often, this criticism is quite justified. We have lost in many political and information-related situations. But let me tell you, we are learning!”
Evstafiev pointed out that after Putin saw the reactions and read the comments about the Carlson interview, he arranged for the “after-party” with Zarubin and filled in the blanks. He proudly added, “This will be in the textbooks as a perfectly executed action, with respect to its place, its timing, and style.”
Discussing Putin’s commentary on Trump and Biden on Thursday, host of 60 Minutes Olga Skabeeva surmised, “Putin said one thing, but everyone understood that he meant something else entirely.”
Julia Davis is a columnist for The Daily Beast and the creator of the Russian Media Monitor. She is a member of the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, the Screen Actors Guild, and Women In Film.
Europe’s Edge is CEPA’s online journal covering critical topics on the foreign policy docket across Europe and North America. All opinions expressed on Europe’s Edge are those of the author alone and may not represent those of the institutions they represent or the Center for European Policy Analysis. CEPA maintains a strict intellectual independence policy across all its projects and publications.
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