“Is this a talk show or a serious discussion?”: 20 falsehoods from Tucker Carlson's interview with Vladimir Putin

“Allow me to share this with you: a man has been imprisoned in a country allied with the United States, who, driven by patriotic motives, took out a criminal in one of the European capitals. Now, during the Caucasus events, do you know what he [the criminal] did? I hesitate to discuss it, but I must: he placed our POWs on a road, then crushed their skulls by driving a truck over them. What sort of person does that make him, and can he truly be called human? Nonetheless, there was a patriot who dealt with him in one of the European capitals. Whether it was his own initiative or not — that's a separate question.”

Although he did not directly raise the name of the “patriot” in question, context leaves no doubt that Putin had in mind the Russian assassin Vadim Krasikov, who served in the Vympel special unit of the FSB before shooting dead Chechen refugee Zelimkhan Khangoshvili in Berlin in 2019. Contrary to the interviewee’s rhetorical uncertainty about “whether it was [Krasikov’s] own initiative or not,” there is little doubt that Putin knows who ordered the hit that Krasikov carried out.

Why? Because before being arrested in Berlin in 2019, Krasikov was already wanted in connection with the murder of the businessman Albert Nazranov — and even that one was far from his first contract killing. For example, in 2007, Krasikov and two accomplices had shot businessman Yuri Kozlov in the northern Russian tourist town of Kostomuksha. Krasikov faced life imprisonment for that crime, but instead of prison, he was sent to a training base for the FSB special forces, where the “patriot” was trained in the methods he ultimately used to kill Khangoshvili.

Putin has also raised questionable accusations about the character of Khangoshvili — Krasikov’s Berlin murder victim — on multiple occasions. For instance, in 2019, shortly after the killing, Putin asserted:

“[Khangoshvili] was a militant, an exceedingly ruthless and violent individual. In one of the operations he was involved in, 98 people lost their lives. He was one of the masterminds behind the bombings in the Moscow metro.”

While there have been terrorist attacks aimed against the Moscow metro, none resulted in such a high death toll. The most significant series of terrorist attacks took place in 2010, claiming a total of 41 lives. This discrepancy caught the media's attention, prompting Putin to amend his statement in a subsequent comment:

“Khangoshvili was an utterly ruthless killer who, in a single operation in the Caucasus, eliminated 98 people. Reflect on that number: 98 people.”

Certainly, one can reflect on this figure, yet again, there is no public record of a terrorist attack resulting in such a high casualty count.

More importantly, there is no evidence linking Khangoshvili to terrorist activities or war crimes whatsoever. Had Putin possessed any substantial evidence, he could have pursued Khangoshvili's extradition from Germany. Germany consistently honors extradition requests for genuine extremists and terrorists to Russia. For instance, in September 2017, Abdul Omarov, who fought alongside militant groups in Syria, was extradited to Russia. Similarly, in August 2018, Murat Kalmykov, a native of Kabardino-Balkaria who also fought in Syria, was extradited. In September 2019, Germany extradited a 19-year-old from a Caucasus republic, though this person's identity remains undisclosed; hestands accused of recruiting teenagers via social media into terrorist networks. Nonetheless, as reported by The Insider, Russia did not even approach Germany with any demands pertaining to Khangoshvili.