It was US journalist Tucker Carlson who offered an interview to Russian President Vladimir Putin and the latter accepted the offer "quite quickly" after considering Carlson's approach, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Sunday.
"In fact, he [Carlson] reached out to us, he offered this interview. We actively looked through his materials, looked at his audience, studied how balanced his coverage of certain issues was, and we decided to recommend to the president that he give such an interview. He agreed very quickly," Peskov told Rossiya 1 reporter Pavel Zarubin.
At the same time, the Kremlin had certain concerns that there would be "persecution" of Carlson even before the start of the interview, given that the West is becoming "increasingly unpredictable," the spokesman stated, adding that the fears had not been in vain. Carlson himself was also likely to anticipate the possible controversy around the hit interview with Putin, but it has definitely added popularity to the US journalist, Peskov stated.
The interview was released on Thursday evening and caused huge interest around the world. The social media platform X, where the video with the interview was posted, shows some 188 million views so far. However, the video has scored additional millions of views on other platforms such as YouTube.