MOSCOW – Russian President Vladimir Putin called on the United States to “make an agreement” ceding Ukrainian territory to Russia in order to end the war.

He made the remarks during a two-hour interview with a former Fox News TV host that was broadcast on Feb 8.

Mr Putin sought to appeal directly to American conservatives just as Republican lawmakers are holding up aid to Ukraine on Capitol Hill.

He echoed the talking points of politicians, such as former US president Donald Trump, who say the US has more pressing priorities than a war that is thousands of kilometres away.

“Don’t you have anything better to do?” Mr Putin said in response to American conservative commentator Tucker Carlson’s question about the possibility of US soldiers fighting in Ukraine. “You have issues on the border, issues with migration, issues with the national debt.”

“Wouldn’t it be better to negotiate with Russia? Make an agreement,” he told Mr Carlson. “Start respecting our country and its interests and look for certain solutions.”

Much of the interview constituted a familiar Kremlin history lesson about Russia’s historical claim to Eastern European lands, beginning in the ninth century, that Mr Putin made little effort to distil for American ears.

He also laid out his well-worn and spurious justifications for invading Ukraine, asserting that Russia’s goal was to “stop this war” that he claims the West is waging against his country.

But Mr Putin was more direct than usual about how he sees his Ukraine invasion ending: not with a military victory, but through an agreement with the West.

At the interview’s end, Mr Putin told Mr Carlson that the time had come for talks about ending the war because “those who are in power in the West have come to realise” that Russia will not be defeated on the battlefield.

“If so, if the realisation has set in, they have to think what to do next. We are ready for this dialogue.”

Responding to Mr Carlson’s question about whether Nato would accept Russian control over parts of Ukraine, Mr Putin said: “Let them think how to do it with dignity. There are options if there is a will.”

The original Russian version of Mr Putin’s comments was not immediately released, leaving viewers to rely on the dubbed translation in Mr Carlson’s broadcast.

The interview was conducted on Feb 6. It was Mr Putin’s first with a Western media outlet since the start of the war in Ukraine in 2022, and his first with an American one since 2021.

While Mr Putin regularly gave interviews to mainstream American media in his first two decades in power, his spokesperson said the Kremlin chose Mr Carlson this time because those traditional outlets take “an exclusively one-sided position” with regard to Russia.

Mr Putin held out an olive branch to the West, rather than resort to some of the fiery rhetoric he has employed before domestic audiences.

Afforded a chance by Mr Carlson to expand on his efforts to portray Russia as a defender of “traditional values” against what he frequently depicts as a degenerate and declining West, the Russian President was uncharacteristically restrained.

“Western society is more pragmatic,” he said. “Russian people think more about the eternal, about moral values.”

He added that there was “nothing wrong” with the Western path, noting that it had led to “good success in production, even in science”.

It was an echo of Mr Putin’s frequent assertion over the last two years that his conflict was not with the West as a whole, but with a hegemonic ruling elite.

The interview’s release on Feb 8 followed days of breathless anticipation in Russia’s state-run news media, which documented Mr Carlson’s every step in Moscow – down to the double cheeseburgers he was said to have ordered at a former McDonald’s.

The hoopla laid bare the Kremlin’s continued aspiration to appeal to Western audiences, despite Mr Putin’s on-and-off threats to use nuclear weapons and Russia’s arrest in 2023 of American journalist Evan Gershkovich.

Mr Putin addressed both of those matters in the interview, apparently seeking to signal that Moscow and Washington can find common ground. He told Mr Carlson that Russia had no interest in attacking countries on Nato’s eastern flank, contrary to the warnings of some Western officials.

“We have no interest in Poland, Latvia or anywhere else,” Mr Putin said. “It’s just threat-mongering.”

Mr Carlson pressed Mr Putin to release Mr Gershkovich, a Wall Street Journal correspondent that Russia arrested in 2023 on espionage accusations that the Journal and the US government vehemently deny.

Mr Putin said “the dialogue continues” on his fate, hinting that the Kremlin was holding out for a favourable offer from the US to release him as part of a prisoner swap.

Taken together, Mr Putin’s appearance underscored his tactical confidence as his adversaries face a vulnerable moment: Ukraine is struggling on the battlefield, further military aid is stalled in the US Congress, and Kremlin-friendly politicians are ascendant on both sides of the Atlantic.

Chief among those politicians is Trump, the Republican presidential front runner whom Mr Carlson frequently praises.

That confluence of circumstances means that the interview with Mr Carlson comes as Mr Putin senses his “finest hour”, said Ms Tatiana Stanovaya, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Centre.

Mr Putin’s end goal, she said, is to secure a peace deal in Ukraine that will cement Russia’s control of the territory it has already captured and to install a friendly government in Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital.

But to achieve it, Mr Putin appears to believe that he needs the US to put pressure on Ukraine to hold negotiations on ending the war, rather than to continue to resist Russia’s invasion.

“He believes that he now has a window of opportunity,” she said. NYTIMES