Tucker Carlson, a far-right political commentator close to the incoming U.S. administration, released an interview with Russia's Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on Dec. 5.
During the 80-minute interview, Lavrov peddled a variety of Russian propaganda talking points with little to no challenge from the interviewer.
Carlson has been among the strongest pro-Russian voices in the U.S., spreading the Kremlin's unsubstantiated claims across a variety of platforms.
The ex-Fox News host has also previously given a platform to Russian President Vladimir Putin, where the Russian leader shared false narratives on a wide variety of topics, including his justification for Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and presented a lengthy alternative history of Ukraine and Russia, debunked by historians on multiple occasions.
Similar to his interview with Putin in February, Carlson never confronted Russia's chief diplomat about the numerous lies and distortions nor challenged the minister about Moscow's invasion and war crimes in Ukraine.
A close ally of U.S. President-elect Donald Trump, Carlson seems to have been more interested in goading Lavrov into blaming the outgoing administration of Joe Biden for Russia's war against Ukraine.
Speaking about Ukraine and the war, Lavrov again repeated the claim that the Ukrainian government was illegitimate because of a revolution, which Russia calls "a coup," 10 years ago.
Ukraine has seen two presidents and four prime ministers since then.
Lavrov asserted that Russia's "security interests" overrule the sovereign decisions of other countries, while also denying responsibility for the numerous war crimes committed by Russian troops, including the Bucha massacre, which saw over 450 civilians murdered by Moscow's soldiers.
Lavrov on Ukraine's EuroMaidan Revolution, Crimea, and Donbas
Early in the discussion, Lavrov sought to justify Russia's full-scale war by painting the EuoMaidan Revolution as a "military coup," accusing Kyiv of banning the Russian language and attacking the country's Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts, collectively known as Donbas, to "murder Russian speakers."
The EuroMaidan Revolution was a mass, grassroots movement that broke out after Ukrainian pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych refused to sign a long-expected association agreement with the EU.
After he failed to suppress the revolution with police batons and snipers — killing over 100 people — he fled to Russia. The parliament's constitutional majority then voted to impeach Yanukovych, calling an early election that was declared free and fair by international observers.
Immediately after the revolution, the infamous "little green men" — well-equipped Russian soldiers without insignia — occupied Crimea. Putin initially called them "self-defense forces" but later admitted that Russian forces were indeed active in Crimea at the start of the occupation.
The referendum that Lavrov presented as evidence of Crimeans wanting to join Russia was effectively held at gunpoint and declared illegitimate by the U.N. General Assembly.
Russian invasion of Ukraine spread to the country's east, where Russian militants equipped by the Kremlin began to seize administrative buildings. Ukrainian forces responded by launching an anti-terrorist operation and regaining control of its sovereign territory, after which Russia sent soldiers to fight. Former FSB officer and head militant Igor Girkin later acknowledged effectively initiating the war, as well as the presence of the Russian military in Donbas.
Russian propagandists have never provided evidence of Ukraine conducting a "genocide" of Russian speakers, instead outright fabricating stories or twisting facts. Nor has Ukraine "banned" the Russian language — which remains broadly used in the country — merely promoted the country's native language in the public sphere to fend off Russian influence.
Who is doing the nuclear saber-rattling?
Lavrov was more hesitant than Carlson to declare the U.S. and Russia on the brink of a nuclear exchange but accused NATO and Western officials of provocative statements and actions in that regard.
Painting Russia as a sensible actor, Lavrov reminded that Moscow was one of the co-signatories of the nuclear powers' January 2022 statement on preventing a nuclear war and an arms race.
But later in the interview, he warned that Russia is "ready to use any means not to allow (the West) to succeed in what they call a strategic defeat of Russia." This follows a string of veiled nuclear threats the Kremlin has issued since day one of the full-scale invasion.
When announcing the full-scale invasion in February 2022, Putin warned that "whoever tries to hinder us" will face the consequences "that you have never faced in your history."
Russian media and officials have since made a number of full-blown nuclear threats to the West to undermine their support for Ukraine, showing a simulation of a nuclear strike on London on TV or threatening a "nuclear apocalypse."
These threats have only escalated in recent weeks. Moscow lowered its threshold for a nuclear response and struck Dnipro with the new Oreshnik intermediate-range ballistic missile (IRBM) in what the Moscow Times described as a carefully orchestrated stunt to scare the Western public into submission.
'Fighting for the people, not the resources'
Providing pragmatic reasons for Washington's continued support for Ukraine, U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham said in September that Ukraine possesses "trillions of dollars that could be good to our economy" — an argument repeated by Zelensky himself.
Lavrov presented this statement as evidence that the West only seeks to take control of Ukraine's natural resources.
"We care about people, not about natural resources, which somebody in the United States would like to keep and to have Ukrainians just as servants sitting on these natural resources," Lavrov said.
This statement stands in stark contrast with Russia's looting of occupied Ukrainian territories in Ukraine. The Wall Street Journal wrote that Moscow earned at least $1 billion by selling stolen Ukrainian grain.
"Iron ore, coal, titanium, uranium, manganese, gold and lithium deposits are all present in Ukraine, resources which are almost certainly coveted by Russia but also potential targets as Russia seeks to grind down Ukraine's economy, denying access and destroying architecture," the U.K. Defense Ministry said.
"South of Dniprorudne in Ukraine's Zaporizhzhia Oblast, Russia continues its mining activity, removing iron ore by rail." Some experts described looting natural resources as one of the key reasons for the full-scale invasion.
As for Lavrov's "care" for "the people," the Wall Street Journal estimated Russia had lost 200,000 soldiers killed and 400,000 wounded in the full-scale war, making it the country's costliest war since World War II. Russian tactics are often characterized as "meat wave assaults," overwhelming Ukrainian defenders with infantry at the cost of staggering losses.
Russia's war also caused the greatest destruction to the Russian-speaking regions in the east and the south, flattening whole towns and cities like Bakhmut, Mariupol, Volnovakha, or Avdiivka — the very people Moscow claims to protect.
Cherry-picking UN Charter
"The United Nations Charter, among other things, says that all countries must respect the equality of states and the right of people for self-determination," Lavrov said, claiming that Kyiv violated these rules with its "military coup" and "oppression of Russians" in Ukraine.
Accusing the West and Ukraine of cherry picking the U.N. Charter, Lavrov went on to contradict his earlier statement. While calling for respect for "self-determination," Lavrov then says Russia has the right to dictate the internal affairs of countries as part of its "security interest."
The Russian foreign minister reminded that Putin presented NATO with a list of demands in December 2021 to avoid an escalation in Ukraine. These included a ban on Ukraine from entering NATO, and the rollback of allied forces from the territory of its Central and Eastern European member states — denying the sovereign decision-making of other countries.
Lavrov makes similar statements elsewhere in the interview, claiming it was within Russia's purview to weigh in on a deal between Yanukovych and the Ukrainian opposition in February 2014 or the association agreement between Kyiv and the EU.
Russian state-sponsored murders
When the Russian foreign minister sought to dispute blame for the Bucha massacre or poisoning of Alexei Navalny, Carlson yet again offered no challenge.
The Bucha massacre, carried out by Russian forces in the occupied Kyiv suburb in early 2022, cost the lives of hundreds of civilians. The act was broadly documented by international media and human rights organizations.
Like several times before, Lavrov told Carlson that Ukraine failed to provide the list of victims.
While the full list is difficult to establish as the investigation and the identification is ongoing, the Bucha Ritual Service began publishing the names of the victims within weeks after the discovery of the massacre.
The Ukrainian police found 422 bodies of murdered Bucha residents as of this year, with the search ongoing.
Lavrov also denied Russia's involvement in the 2020 poisoning of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who died later in a Russian prison camp in February 2024. The Russian minister noted that Navalny was "treated by Russian doctors in Siberia" after he "felt bad on a plane over Russia."
He then claimed that Germany, where Navalny was transported, was not willing to provide evidence of Navalny's poisoning and that only after the oppositionist received treatment in the German military hospital did such accusations appear.
Lavrov even insinuated that Germans "did something" to Navalny that might have led to his demise in 2024, providing no evidence.
However, Russian doctors tending to Navalny before his transport to Germany already indicated the presence of an industrial chemical on his skin and hair.
Following laboratory tests in Berlin, German Chancellor Angela Merkel pronounced there was no doubt that Navalny was poisoned by Novichok, a nerve agent widely used by Russian assassins. The conclusion was supported by laboratory tests in Sweden and France.
Bellingcat later published a full investigation detailing how Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) attempted to assassinate Navalny, obtaining a recording of an FSB officer inadvertently admitting to the poisoning in 2020.
Navalny returned to Russia after the poisoning, where he was arrested upon arrival. He was kept in a remote prison within the Arctic Circle, where he died on Feb. 16, 2024. According to published records, the state officials lied about Navalny's condition and collapse, leading to a belief that the Kremlin was behind the opposition leader's demise.
