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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s office on Thursday denied social media pundit Tucker Carlson’s claim that he had landed an interview with the nation’s leader.
In a statement in Ukrainian on Facebook, Zelenskyy’s spokesperson Sergii Nykyforov took a swipe at the far-right commentator, telling him to check his sources in Russia’s FSB security service “more carefully.”
“The President of Ukraine has a completely different schedule, and Tucker Carlson is not there,” Nykyforov said, according to an English translation of the statement.
Carlson had teased an interview with Zelenskyy the day before, writing on X, “Looks like we’ve got the Zelenskyy interview. We’ve been trying for two years, and with particular intensity after interviewing Putin in February.”
Carlson, who has been attacked for his pro-Kremlin stance, interviewed Russian President Vladimir Putin in February. It was Putin’s first interview with a Western media figure since the invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Carlson was widely criticized for his softball questions and his apparent deference to the Russian leader.
A former Fox News cable show host, Carlson has tried to reassert himself as a power player in the media landscape since being booted from Fox in April 2023. Months afterward, he launched the Tucker Carlson Network, a subscription streaming service, where he has continued to peddle conspiracy theories and misinformation to his audience. Segments of his show have also aired on Russian state TV. (Carlson has denied any involvement, telling CNN, “Of course I have no partnership with Russia.”)
Carlson’s process for verifying sources has raised questions in the past. In March of this year, two YouTube pranksters claimed they tricked Carlson into believing that he was interviewing a Kensington Palace employee who had been fired for poorly editing a photo of Catherine, Princess of Wales.