vladimir putin’s interview with american journalist tucker carlson has already received more than 45 million views. the president answered dozens of questions, many of them related to ukraine and relations between russia and the west. watch the full recording of this conversation right now.

came to kiev, removed two brothers from power, who, apparently, were once members of rurik’s squad, and thus...

russia began to develop, having two centers, in kiev and novgorod. the next very significant date in the history of russia, 988, is baptism russia, when prince vladimir, the great-grandson of rurik, baptized russia and accepted orthodoxy, the eastern part of christianity, eastern christianity, from that time began to strengthen. one language and after the baptism of russia, one faith , the power of the prince , a centralized russian state began to take shape, but for various reasons after... the introduction

of the throne's heritage, ancient times, and the middle ages, by yaroslav the wise a little later after he passed away , the throne's legacy was complex was transmitted not directly from father to eldest son, but from the deceased prince, his brother, then his sons along different lines, all this led to the fragmentation of russia, a single state, which began to take shape as a single state under... fragmentation, there is nothing special about this, the same thing happened in europe, but the fragmented russian state became an easy prey for the empire that genghis khan once created, and his successors, khanbaty, came to russia, plundered almost all the cities, ruined them, the southern part, where kiev was, by the way, some other cities, they just lost independence, and... and the northern cities,

they retained part of their sovereignty, paid tribute to the horde, but retained part of their sovereignty, and then in the center in moscow they began, began...

but, but the poles for decades were engaged in the polishization of this part of the population , the language introduced this to their own, they began to introduce the idea that these are not quite russians, that since they live on the edge, and not ukrainians, and initially the word ukrainian meant that a person lives on the outskirts of the ukrainian state, or is engaged, engaged.

so that there is no confusion in 1650 in 1600 54 and a little earlier, even the people who controlled the power in this part of the russian lands turned to warsaw, i repeat

, demanding that people of russian origin and orthodox religion be sent to them, when warsaw , in principle, was nothing to them... copies of where the letters are, here are the letters of bogdan khmelnitsky , then the person who controlled the power in this part of the russian lands, which we now call ukraine, he wrote to warsaw demanding that their rights be respected, and after being refused, began to write letters to moscow

with a request to take them under the strong hand of the moscow tsar, there is a copy of these documents, i will leave them with you as a good memory, there is a translation into russian, poland, it lasted for 13 years, then the truce was concluded, just after the conclusion of this act of 1654, after 30, in my opinion, 2 years, peace was concluded with poland, eternal peace, as it was said then, these lands, the entire

left bank of the dnieper, including kiev, went to russia, the entire right bank of the dnieper remained with poland . then during the time of catherine ii russia returned all its historical lands, including the south, west, this is all a continuation. this idea, which was once born in poland, that the people living in this territory are not entirely

russian, they are supposedly a special ethnic group of ukrainians, began to be promoted by the austrian general staff, and theorists of ukrainian independence arose already in the 19th century, who spoke of the need for ukrainian independence , but the truth is, all these pillars, the pillars of ukrainian independence said that it should have very good... relations with russia, they are on this insisted, insisted, uh , but nevertheless, after the revolution of 1917 - the bolsheviks tried to restore statehood, uh, a civil war broke out, including with poland, peace was signed with poland in 1921, which - according to which the western part of the on the right bank of the dnieper. again went to poland in 1939 after poland

collaborated with hitler, and poland collaborated with hitler, and hitler proposed, we have everything in the documents in the archives, proposed to conclude a peace treaty with poland on friendship and alliance there, but demanded that poland gave us up.

germany, refused to comply with hitler’s demands, but nevertheless took part together with hitler in the division of czechoslovakia, but since it did not give up the danz corridor, they still forced it, the poles forced it, they played too hard and forced hitler to start a second... hitler had nothing left to

implement his plans to start with poland. by the way, the soviet union behaved, i read archival documents, behaved very honestly, and the soviet union asked for permission from poland to send its troops to help czechoslovakia, but... including western ukraine, russia, under the name of the soviet union, thus returned

to its own and historical territories, after the victory in the great patriotic war, as we say, this is the second world war, all these territories were finally assigned to russia, to the soviet union, and poland, with this compensation, it must be assumed, received western ones. the original german territories are the western eastern part of germany, part of the lands are the western ones.

lands in which people lived in these territories, even if they had never before were called ukraine, for some reason during the formation all this was merged into the ukrainian ussr, including everything along the black sea, which was obtained during the time of catherine; in fact , they never had any historical relation to ukraine,

even if we think back, let’s go back to 1654 , when these territories returned to the composition. this means that soviet ukraine received a huge number of territories that never had anything to do with it at all, especially during the black sea region, they once, when russia received them as a result russian-turkish wars, were called new russia , so, but this doesn’t matter, the important thing is that lenin, the founder of the soviet state, created

ukraine exactly like this, this means that this is all over the course of...

in a certain sense, an artificial state created by the will of stalin, what do you think, does hungary have the right to take away its lands and other nations, can they take their lands, maybe return ukraine to the borders of 1654, well, i don’t know what the borders of 1654 are, but if everyone thinks, that the time of stalin's reign is called stalin's regime, everyone says that there was a lot there. violation of human rights, violations of the rights of other states, then in this sense, of course , it is quite possible, well, if we don’t say that they have the right to return these lands , then in any case it’s clear, you told orban, you told orban he

never spoke about this, that he could regain part of the lands of ukraine, never, not once. we didn’t even have any conversations about this, but i know for sure that, that, that, of course, the hungarians who are there live, they of course want to return to their historical homeland, moreover, i ’ll now tell you a very interesting story, i’ll digress, this is a personal story, i mean , somewhere in the early eighties, by car from the then leningrad from st. petersburg. i just went on a trip around the soviet union, through kiev, stopped in kiev, and then went to western ukraine, went to the city called beregovoe, and that’s all there. titles of cities, towns in russian in a language that is incomprehensible to me, in hungarian, in russian in hungarian, not in ukrainian

, in russian in hungarian, i’m driving through some village, near the houses there are men in three-piece suits, in black, three-piece suits in top hats in black, i say, are these some kind of artists, he tells me, no , these are not any kind of art, these are hungarians. i say, what are they doing here? like what? this is their land, they live here, everything, all the names in soviet times, the eighties, they still have, they keep the hungarian language, the name, all the costumes are national, they are hungarians and feel like hungarians, and of course, when this happens now infringement, i think that...

1991, the collapse of the soviet union, everything that ukraine received as a gift from russia from the barsky shoulder, it took with it, in general,

now i am coming to a very important moment of today, because this the collapse of the soviet union, the collapse of the soviet union was essentially initiated by the russian leadership, i do n’t know what the russian leadership was guided by then, but i suspect that... of several components, there were several reasons to think that everything would be fine, the first, well firstly, i think that the russian leadership proceeded from the fact that the fundamental foundations of relations between russia and ukraine, in fact , a common language, 90% of them spoke russian too much, which means family ties, everyone there, every third person has some kind of family ties, one way or another friend.

no one listened, moreover, he got angry somehow, well, he’s also waiting for conversations in our archives, if he says, you won’t listen to me, i’ll never come to moscow again, he was angry with the soviet leadership, but well, he was right , everything

happened as he said, but nevertheless, yes, of course, his words came true, you spoke about this many times, it seems to me that this is absolutely fair, and many in the states also thought that relations between russia and the united states would be normal after the collapse of the soviet union, but the opposite happened, but you never explained , why do you think this happened, well... why did this happen? well, yes, maybe the west is afraid of a strong russia, but the west is not afraid of a strong china. the west fears a strong china more than a strong russia, because russia 150 million people, in china one and a half billion. and the chinese economy is developing by leaps and bounds, more than 5 percent per year, it was even more, but this is

enough for china. therefore, bismar ’s potential once said, the main thing is potential , china’s potential is colossal, the first economy in the world today in terms of purchasing power, in terms of economic volume, has already overtaken the united states quite a long time ago, and the pace is growing, now we won’t say who is afraid of whom, let 's not talk in such categories, let's talk about the fact that after 1991 years when russia expected that it would be taken into the fraternal family of civilized peoples... nothing like that happened, you deceived us, when i say, you don’t mean you personally, i mean, of course, but the united states, they promised that they wouldn’t there will be nato expansion to the east, but, but this happened five times, five waves of expansion, well, we endured everything , persuaded everything, said no need, we are now our own, as they say, bourgeois, we have a market economy, no, no , the authorities of the communist party, let's come to an agreement, moreover, me too... already

spoke about this publicly, well, now i’ll take yeltsin’s time, there was coming, there was a moment when, as if, when a gray cat ran, before that yeltsin went to the usa, remember, he spoke in congress and said wonderful words, good b america, yes, he he said all this, these were signals, well , let us in, no, when the events began in yugoslavia, immediately before...

international law, the un charter, the bombing of belgrade began. the united states has let the genie out of the bottle. moreover, when russia objected and expressed your indignation, what was said? the charter and international law are outdated. now everyone refers to international law, but then they started saying that everything is outdated, everything needs to be changed, something really needs to be changed, because the balance of power has changed, that’s true. but not in this way, but nevertheless, yes, by the way, they immediately began to throw mud at yeltsen, indicating that he was an alcoholic, did not understand anything, did not understand anything, he understood everything, he understood everything, i assure you, that means, well, okay, i became president in 2000, i think, okay all this yugoslav issue has passed, but we must try to restore relations, after all , open this door that russia

tried to...