During a two-hour interview in the Kremlin, American TV presenter Tucker Carlson asked Vladimir Putin about the “concerns” of many countries regarding the fate of Transylvania.

Carlson posed the question to the Russian president after initially asking him if he had told Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán that he could get territories inhabited by the Hungarian minority from Ukraine.

“Never. I never told him, not even once. We didn’t even have a conversation on this topic,” the Kremlin leader replied, adding that he “knows for sure” that Hungarians living in Ukraine wanted to return to Hungary.

The Russian president then recounts a visit he allegedly made in the 1980s to Transcarpathia, Ukraine’s region with the largest Hungarian minority, where he said he met ethnic Hungarians who had preserved their language and identity.

“They are Hungarians and consider themselves Hungarians,” he emphasized.

“And I think many nations are also upset about Transylvania, as you obviously know. Many nations are frustrated by the borders drawn by the wars of the 21st century and the wars that go back 1,000 years that you mentioned,” Tucker Carlson continued, echoing Putin’s comments made earlier in the interview.

The President of Russia avoided a direct answer to the question about Transylvania

The TV presenter then points out that despite the threats from the West, which Moscow says it has felt for years, Putin did not attack Ukraine almost two years ago.

“I understand that my long speeches probably go beyond the interview genre. That’s why I asked you at the beginning, are we having a serious conversation or a show? You spoke seriously. So please understand me. We are approaching the creation of Soviet Ukraine. Then, in 1991, the Soviet Union collapsed and everything that Russia generously gave to Ukraine was taken away from it,” Putin replied.

He then launched into a long-winded critique of the former Soviet leadership that allowed the collapse of the USSR without directly answering Carlson’s question about Transylvania.

After this part of the interview, Carlson moved on to the question of Russia’s break with the US and the West, despite high hopes for rapprochement after the fall of the Iron Curtain.

Putin said that he discussed Russia’s accession to NATO with Bill Clinton

Vladimir Putin told Carlson that in a meeting in the Kremlin with US President Bill Clinton at the end of his term, he asked him: “Do you think that if Russia asked to join NATO, it would happen?”.

Putin said the former Democratic White House president responded: “You know, it’s interesting. I think so.” The president claimed that when he later met with Clinton over dinner, he told him, “It’s interesting, ‘You know, I talked to my team, no, it’s not possible now.’

“You can ask him. I think he will watch our interview and confirm,” Putin added.

Asked by Tucker Carlson if he would join NATO, Putin said: “If he said yes, the rapprochement process would begin, and eventually it could happen if we saw the sincere desire of our partners. But that didn’t happen.”

He also expressed his displeasure with NATO’s eastward expansion.

“The promise was that NATO would not expand to the east. But it happened five times. There were five waves of expansion. I endured all this. We tried to convince them. I told them: please don’t do this,” said the Russian President.

CERTIFICATE:

• VIDEO Tucker Carlson, interview with Vladimir Putin: Kremlin leader rules out invasion of Poland or Latvia / Spoke with Bill Clinton about Russia joining NATO / “Defeat in Ukraine is impossible”

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