2024-02-10 08:59:10
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz sharply criticized Russian President Vladimir Putin’s interview with right-wing American TV host Tucker Carlson, saying it told an “absurd story,” DPA reported.
Scholz, who arrived on a two-day visit to the United States, said in the capital Washington today that this is an interview that “openly presents a fraudulent picture of the real actions of Russia in Ukraine and tells a completely absurd story about the reason for this war.”
However, there is “a very clear reason for this”, stressed Scholz, referring to the Kremlin’s desire to annex part of Ukraine. “And all the stories that are being told about this do not change the fact that this is precisely the goal of his (Putin’s – note ed.) imperial efforts,” the German chancellor said.
Putin gave an interview to an American journalist for the first time since the start of Russia’s war in Ukraine, which this month enters its third year. In it, the Russian president hinted that Moscow could exchange the American journalist Evan Gershkovich, detained in Russia for espionage, for “a man who killed a bandit in a European capital for patriotic reasons”, BTA reported.
The allusion is likely to Vadim Krasikov, sentenced to life in prison for the 2019 killing in a Berlin park of a former Chechen separatist, an assassination that German courts say was ordered by Moscow.
Scholz was asked in Washington if he thought such an exchange was possible, but he remained silent, according to DPA. The chancellor said only that such “sensitive matters” should be discussed in private and not in front of the media.