By David Ljunggren, Ronald Popeski and David Brunnstrom
(Reuters) -Russian President Vladimir Putin said in an interview that aired on Thursday that Russia will fight for its interests but has no interest in expanding its war in Ukraine to other countries such as Poland and Latvia.
Putin made the comment in a more than two-hour interview with Tucker Carlson, his first with an American journalist since before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine nearly two years ago.
Asked if he could imagine a scenario in which he would send Russian troops to Poland, a NATO member. Putin replied:
“Only in one case, if Poland attacks Russia. Why? Because we have no interest in Poland, Latvia or anywhere else. Why would we do that? We simply don’t have any interest.”
The interview was conducted in Moscow on Tuesday and aired on tuckercarlson.com.
Putin spoke in Russian and his remarks were dubbed into English. He began with lengthy remarks about Russia’s relations with Ukraine, Poland and other countries.
The Kremlin said Putin agreed to the Carlson interview because the approach of the former Fox News host differed from the “one-sided” reporting of the Ukraine conflict by many Western news outlets.
Carlson is considered to have close connections to former U.S. President Donald Trump, who is expected to be the Republican Party candidate in the November U.S. presidential election.
Trump has called for de-escalation of the war in Ukraine, in which the Biden administration has strongly backed the government of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, and complained about the billions of dollars in aid sent so far.
For his part, Carlson has said much Western media coverage of the war is biased in Kyiv’s favor.
(Reporting by David Brunnstrom, David Ljunggren and Ron Popeski; additional reporting by Rami Ayyub; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)
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