[RE]Discover Putin - His interviews

The Putin interview by Tucker Carlson recently made waves [1, 2, 3]. However, while this was the Russian president's first interview with a Western journalist since the controversial Russian military operation in Ukraine began, it was by no means the only occasion on which Vladimir Putin had commented on international issues. Previously there had been (among others):

Putin's speech to the Bundestag in 2001 [4]

Putin's speech at the Munich Security Conference in 2007 [5]

Interview by the German journalist Schönenborn for the Phoenix channel in 2013 [6] 

The Putin interviews by US director Stone from 2015 - 2017  [7, 8, 9, 10]

Financial Times interview by journalist Lionel Barber from 2019 [11]

The NBC interview by journalist Keir Simmons from 2021 [12]

Putin therefore had his say relatively regularly in the West. However, it is fair to say that nobody listened to him. It is therefore time to analyze the Russian president's statements over time - did he constantly change his mind, constantly lie, make incomprehensible statements, or was there a kind of common thread and correct statements? And are there actually differences in politics between Russia and, for example, Germany or the USA? To answer these questions, it is helpful to look at the speeches and interviews mentioned above in detail. This article will first look at the first three sources [4, 5, 6] as well as excerpts from the NBC interview from 2021 [12] due to the current situation. A further article on the topic will analyze the Putin interviews by Oliver Stone [7, 8, 9, 10], the Financial Times interview [11], the remaining parts of the NBC interview [12] and the current interview by Tucker Carlson [3].

In his speech to the Bundestag on September 25, 2001 [4], Putin said that he would like to see European integration for Russia and described the Soviet occupation ideology as pernicious. He praised the low concentration of weapons in Central Europe and the Baltic states and named a stable peace as Russia's main goal, mentioning various disarmament agreements, including START II. He also emphasized the importance of the fight against terrorism. He criticized the lack of an effective mechanism for cooperation, saying that Russia was not yet able to participate in the preparation of decisions. He called for a mental departure from the Cold War, that there should be no dividing lines, but rather a climate of trust and a stable international security architecture. The main goal of Russia's domestic policy is above all to guarantee democratic rights and freedom, to improve the standard of living and the security of the people. According to Putin, Russia was developing dynamically and was at the beginning of the development of democracy and a market economy. Political stability in Russia should be ensured through economic factors such as a liberal tax system with an income tax of 13 percent and a profit tax of 24 percent (this is also reflected in today's tax rates [30]). He reported that Russian economic growth in 2000 was around 8 %, in the 2002 budget social spending was in first place and education spending exceeded the defense budget for the first time. In this speech, Putin also called for German-Russian cooperation in the economic sector [4]. Putin's statements on the key figures of the Russian economy are largely correct, only no data could be found on social spending [30, 31, 32, 33].  His key messages in this speech are: In foreign policy, integration, economic cooperation, a common security architecture and a common fight against terrorism, and in domestic policy, freedom, democracy and an increase in living standards. 

In his speech at the 2007 Munich Security Conference, Putin continued to call for security guarantees from the West and a common security architecture [13]. The German and US governments interpreted this as a call for dialogue, while the USA emphasized that the US missile defence system in Eastern Europe was not directed against Russia [13]. Putin again cited economic and political stability as guarantors of security and called for a dialog between different cultures. Security for one is security for all. Furthermore, Putin wanted a multipolar world and not one in which only the USA set the tone. Political issues should not be resolved according to expediency and the current political climate; rather, international law must be respected, because if no one feels secure, this could lead to an arms race. An unstable international situation jeopardized disarmament. A balance must be sought between the interests of all participants in the international dialog, the use of force should be an exception and should not take place without a UN mandate; under no circumstances should the UN be replaced by the EU or NATO. According to Putin, Russia had agreed further disarmament goals in the field of nuclear weapons with the USA by 2012 and strictly adhered to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, as can be documented [35]. He called for an incentive system in the context of monitoring nuclear energy for other states as well. Unfortunately, according to Putin, no one other than Russia and the USA would adhere to the treaty in the area of short and medium-range missiles. This would force Russia to think about its own security. Even today, several years after the speech, not all states adhere to the various arms treaties or have not even ratified them; Ukraine, for example, is suspected of having used banned cluster munitions [36]. In the area of space security, Russia has developed a proposal and is waiting for a response from the USA. The deployment of troops in peripheral areas was not yet clearly regulated at the time of the 2007 conference. NATO demanded that Russia withdraw from Georgia and Moldova, but at the same time stationed troops in Romania and Bulgaria; according to Putin, Russia saw this as a provocation [13]. In the energy sector, uniform market principles and transparent conditions for all should be created; 26 % of the Russian energy sector are in foreign hands, but unfortunately Russia does not have such a position in other countries. Development aid is also an uncertainty factor, it is tied to companies in the donor country and high-tech products are not given to developing countries. In this context, Putin saw inequality as the cause of terrorism and conflict.  According to Putin, the OSCE should deal with all aspects of security in this context: military, political, economic and humanitarian, and especially with the interrelationship between them. Instead, according to Putin, the OSCE is being misused to promote the foreign policy of individual countries. Instead, he wanted prosperity for all [13].

Once again, his key messages are stability through economic security worldwide, mutual security guarantees and these also through economic interdependence, and on this basis, international disarmament. Putin did not talk about Russian domestic policy at this point [13].

It is difficult to say from whom the OSCE received its money at the time of the speech. In any case, in the years following the speech, it received massive funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation [37]. The foundation runs various projects in developing countries, including controversial vaccine studies [38,39, 40]. This raises doubts as to whether development aid is really included wherever it is labeled development aid.

In the Phoenix interview from 2013, Schönenborn first asked Putin about the new law on non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that had been passed in Russia. Putin explained that NGOs in Russia that receive financial support from abroad and carry out political activities in Russia must disclose their finances and register as foreign agents. The USA has had such a law since 1938, and NGOs there have to answer a long list of questions [41, 42]. According to Putin, there is one Russian company in France and one in the USA that has registered; according to Putin, 654 foreign NGOs had registered in RUS in the four months since the law was passed at the time of the interview. Around 28.3 billion roubles, approximately 855 million $, have been turned over, a large part of which has come to these organizations via diplomatic missions of various countries. According to Putin, Russia can only function with a strong opposition and with competition, although the opposition does not necessarily have to be financed from abroad. In this interview, Putin was proud of the newly introduced Russian direct elections; parties only need to have 500 members to be able to register [46]. The volume of trade with the EU is only just below that of the EU with the USA, and there is good cooperation with Germany in the areas of energy and industry. Germany had invested 25 billion US dollars in Russia in 2013, as Putin correctly explained in the interview [47]. In the interview, Putin criticized the expropriation of Russian investors in Cyprus. He said it was not the investors' fault and that there were other offshore zones. Putin also said that the hostilities in Syria must be stopped immediately, as must the supply of weapons by the USA to certain opposition groups. International law is important and nations must not be destabilized by arms deliveries to the opposition, in this case 3.5 kilotons of weapons. Negotiations must take place. Deposing Assad without knowing what will happen next would lead to difficult situations like those in Iraq and Yemen. According to Putin, Russia has made a clear domestic political decision in favor of democracy and cannot imagine any other development path. However, not all standards from other countries could be transferred to Russia. Individual instruments would have to be worked out. According to Putin, the positive development of the economy and representation of the people showed that this was on the right track, but it would not happen quickly [14].

Here, too, Putin once again emphasizes the importance of international law and economic cooperation in foreign policy as well as freedom in domestic policy.

There are contradictory figures with regard to registered NGOs, but the 654 cannot be confirmed, the figure is probably lower, so Putin is most likely exaggerating here, or the figures openly available on the internet are not correct [43, 44, 45]. However, it is true that the domestic political situation in Russia is rather individual. The country is very large and therefore difficult to govern centrally from Moscow [63].

In the NBC interview from 2021, interviewer Simmons criticizes the NGO law from 2013 and mentions the imprisoned opposition figure Navalny. As in the 2013 interview, Putin replied that the USA also had such a law and that it was much tougher there. It is intended to prevent foreign interference by a foreign-funded opposition. In the USA, many people were arrested on January 6 and are still being detained under questionable conditions; one woman was shot [48, 49, 50, 51, 52]. Putin sees this as persecution on the basis of political views. Navalny, on the other hand, had violated parole conditions, which according to Putin had nothing to do with his political orientation.

NGOs do indeed play an important role in international politics; they operate worldwide with large amounts of money without being democratically elected. Examples of this are the Open Society Foundation (see Fig. 1) or the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation [60, 61, 62]. NGOs can use this money to provide a mouthpiece not only for majorities, but also for minorities. This does not only have advantages - the view of a society from the outside may be distorted, the opinions of minorities could be incorrectly perceived as the majority opinion and thus pose a threat to democracy or elected governments [55, 56, 57]. The Russian opposition must be mentioned in this context, especially the name Navalny. Navalny had embezzled funds from the cosmetics company Yves Rocher and was sentenced to prison in Russia for this; he then returned late from a trip to Germany, which he had to undertake for medical reasons, in accordance with the terms of his probation [58, 59].

Even though this is a separate topic that could fill at least another article, Navalny will be briefly discussed here. In the case of Navalny's last poisoning in 2020, the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) already knew about it in advance, because in a draft annual report from the beginning of July 2020, his impending poisoning in August 2020 was mentioned in advance on page 14. This seems suspicious. It is difficult to say who is responsible this time and thus most likely caused the death of the opposition politician and also presumably sacrificed him for their political interests. 

In any case, the timing is not favorable for Putin against the background of the upcoming elections, and the interview by US journalist Tucker Carlson could also lose positive publicity for Putin due to Navalny's death [26, 27, 28]; as calculating as this may sound against the background of a lost human life, there is no benefit for Putin. The murder of prisoners and members of the opposition must be condemned in any case, regardless of who was ultimately responsible.

Another opposition figure who is seen as a victim of Russian politics is the journalist  Roman Protassevich. On May 24, 2021, he was traveling with his girlfriend Sofia Sapega on Ryan Air flight 4798 from Athens to Vilnius when the pilot of the plane decided to make an emergency landing due to a bomb threat [16]. When asked by the interviewer about this event, Putin did not comment directly, but in return cited the forced landing of the Bolivian president in Vienna [17]. This could be interpreted as whataboutism. However, the temptation to join in here is great, as the surprising invalidation of Edward Snowden's passport during his flight from Hong Kong to Moscow could also be cited here as a measure that did little to promote travel; the USA had unceremoniously declared Snowden's passport invalid during his flight from Hong Kong, meaning that he was unable to leave the transit area in Moscow [54]. So if Lukashenko and Putin were indeed playing dirty here, this would merely be a common practice, as used by other countries. The landing was probably not that forced, because according to the Neue Zürcher Zeitung, it was merely a recommendation to the pilot to land and have the plane checked [16]. It is still unclear who sent the email with the bomb threat [18, 19]. It could have been Russian, Belarusian or other secret services - in other words, simply anyone. The email address was only used in the context of the bomb threat, and Hamas, which was named as the sender of the email, distanced itself from the email [18, 20]. Against this background, it is not clear whether Western secret services wanted to set up Protassevich or whether it was actually Belarus and Russia who faked the bomb threat, even if the journalist seems to imply this with his question. 

The fact is that a series of sanctions were imposed on Belarus after the incident [16, 21, 22], and that the arrest took place shortly after a planned coup against Belarusian President Lukashenko was thwarted [23]. The arrested journalist and his girlfriend had been sponsored by Western NGOs through their institutions, Protassevich is said to have had links to the Ukrainian Azov Battalion, and his girlfriend Sapega was studying at a university funded by George Soros' Open Society Foundation and the WEF [24, 25].

At this point, an interim conclusion can be drawn even before analyzing the interviews from 2015 to 2024: Putin would like to see Russia integrated into the international economy, particularly the EU, a common international security architecture that includes the fight against terrorism and is based on international law and a stable global economy and development, and on this basis, global disarmament; in Russia, he strives for freedom, democracy and an increase in living standards. These statements run through the speeches from 2001 and 2007 as well as the interview from 2013. 

He has at least succeeded in raising the standard of living, and the economic situation has improved significantly since he took office [34, 53]. As a result, the Russian government is relatively popular with the population, at least according to one of the NGOs registered in Russia [29]. The Russian Levada Center, whose staff is made up of people who also teach or have taught at universities in the USA, conducted surveys on the popularity of the government (see Fig. 2 and 3). A comparison between the Russian and German governments is also very revealing (see Fig. 4 and 5). The values for the Russian government fluctuate between 25 and 71 % satisfaction, whereas the German government only produced 17 % satisfied citizens in a snapshot from 2024; even if the less satisfied people are included, the German government lags well behind the Russian government with 55 % (see Fig. 3 and 5). Putin's values fluctuate between 31 and 89 % in the period from 1999 to 2022, and those of Chancellor Scholz between 30 and 73 % in the period from 2022 to 2024, i.e. Putin's highest value is up to 14 percentage points higher than that of our Federal Chancellor (see Fig. 2 and 4). We can only hope that Olaf Scholz will do even better in this respect. Perhaps someone should ask him about the issues that Putin describes as central. The economy and international security are certainly also relatively high on the agenda of the German population, so Scholz could certainly score points in this respect if he were to express himself appropriately...