US doesn’t want talks – Kremlin

Washington is well aware of Moscow’s position but lacks the “political will” to engage in negotiations with Russia, Dmitry Peskov has said

The US has not shown a readiness to negotiate with Russia and apparently lacks the “political will” to do so, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told the news outlet TASS on Saturday.

Peskov made the remarks when asked whether the interview that Russian President Vladimir Putin gave to conservative American journalist Tucker Carlson earlier this week will help communicate Moscow’s position on various issues to Washington. “The US authorities know our position very well, they are perfectly aware of all of Putin’s main points,” the spokesman stated.

However, the US has not demonstrated any readiness to actually engage in negotiations with Russia, according to Peskov.

“This is not an issue of knowledge, but an issue of desire. The desire to do something to get on to the track of negotiations. We have not yet seen such a desire or the political will for this [in the US],” Peskov emphasized.

Nevertheless, the Carlson interview provided a great opportunity for the Russian president to communicate his position to a wider audience in the West, according to Peskov.

“The main thing for us is that our president is heard. And should he be heard, that means more people will think about whether he is right or not. They will think, at least,” he stated when asked about the interest the interview has sparked.

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Kremlin explains why Putin spoke to Tucker Carlson

The interview has elicited a “hysterical” reaction from the US authorities and mainstream media, who rushed to warn the public against watching it, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has claimed.

“They’ve had a hysterical fit – the White House, the Department of State, all the mainstream media are shouting at the top of their lungs one thing only: don’t watch [the interview], and that an American journalist shouldn’t conduct such an interview,” Zakharova told Russia’s Izvestia newspaper on Friday, describing such reaction to the conversation as a “phenomenal” one.

The two-hour-long conversation, which largely revolved around relations between Moscow and Kiev and the ongoing conflict, garnered over 100 million views in just one day on Carlson’s X account (formerly Twitter) alone.

The interview, which was published on Thursday, was the first between the Russian president and a US journalist since the Ukraine conflict began in February 2022.