Former Fox News host Tucker Carlson’s show has begun airing on a Russian state-run TV network, months after Carlson interviewed Russian strongman Vladimir Putin.
Russian TV channel Rossiya 24 began airing episodes of Carlson’s online interview and commentary show in collaboration with “Carlson TV,” according to reports in Russian media outlets.
The first episode aired was a broadcast Carlson posted earlier this month speculating on the origins of Lyme Disease. Last year, the network promoted a show hosted by Carlson and he said he knew nothing about it, the Financial Times reported.
Carlson began airing broadcasts on X and YouTube last year following his dismissal from Fox News in the wake of Dominion Voting Systems’s $787 million defamation lawsuit against the network. He subsequently launched his own network and began airing additional forms of content.
Earlier this year, Carlson became the first western journalist to interview Putin since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine more than two years ago.
For the first hour of the interview, Putin gave Carlson a long-winded, revisionist account of Russian history and criticized NATO expansion upon the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Putin also criticized the concept of Ukrainian nationhood and the possibility of Ukraine joining the NATO alliance. In the latter part of the interview, Carlson pressed Putin on potentially releasing imprisoned Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, who the U.S. government deems wrongfully detained.
Gershkovich, the Journal, and the outlet’s parent company have denied Russia’s espionage charges against him, for which no evidence has been presented to the public. Russian authorities have held Gershkovich in the notoriously brutal Lefortovo prison for over a year.
Since the outset of the war in Ukraine, Carlson has strongly criticized Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky and U.S. support for Ukraine, particularly among Republican lawmakers. Some conservatives and hard-right lawmakers have become intensely opposed to Ukraine aid because they believe it fails to advance U.S. interests and will not alter the final outcome of the war.
President Joe Biden signed in April a $95 billion bipartisan foreign aid package containing roughly $60 billion of aid for Ukraine. Immediately upon Biden’s signature, the U.S. began sending additional weapons stockpiles to Ukraine.
After interviewing Putin, Carlson toured Moscow and showered praise on the Russian capital, particularly when he shopped at a Russian grocery store and was amazed by its ordinary features.
Last month, Carlson interviewed prominent Russian nationalist philosopher Alexander Dugin, who railed against western individualism and progressive values, praising supposed Russian traditionalism.
Dugin is believed to be influential among the upper echelons of the Kremlin.