The trouble with ageing authoritarians is not necessarily that nobody dares tell them they are wrong. It’s that nobody ever tells them they are being tiresome.
A less polite man might have aggressively interrupted his interviewee, but would that have stopped Vlad, the intellectual impaler?
Yes, as Tucker Carlson’s big interview in Moscow finally dropped online tonight, the world learned that Vladimir Putin is, among other things, an almighty history bore. He just cannot be stopped.
Following all the controversy and intrigue about what might be said, Putin managed to smother the excitement of the interview under an iron curtain of his own autodidactism. It was impressive, in a mind-numbing way.
Carlson began the interview with a fair question: ‘On February 22nd, 2022, you addressed your country in a nationwide address when the conflict in Ukraine started, and you said that you were acting because you had come to the conclusion that the United States, through Nato, might initiate a, quote, “surprise attack” on our country and to American ears, that sounds paranoid.
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