Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky tore into Tucker Carlson for calling him a “dictator” who has banned free elections, telling Piers Morgan on Tuesday that the former Fox News star should “stop licking” Vladimir Putin’s “a**” and “stop working” for the Russian leader.
The fiery comeback from the president of Ukraine, which has been at war with Russia for nearly three years, followed Carlson’s tense appearance on Piers Morgan Uncensored last week that featured the far-right pundit firing off a number of accusations about Zelensky.
"The first trait of a dictator is that he is not elected,” Carlson exclaimed while mocking Morgan’s support of the Ukraine leader. “Zelensky is not elected. He has also banned a religious denomination, killed his political opponents, and banned a language group. To me, these all seem like traits of a dictatorship. The governments of the USA and the UK support this dictator.”
Even before Russia launched its unprovoked war against Ukraine in 2022, Carlson has faced bipartisan backlash and mockery for his overtly pro-Kremlin rhetoric. In fact, during the run-up to Russia’s invasion, Carlson’s Putin cheerleading went so over the top that Kremlin TV hosts started to worry that his bias had gone too far, which one former Russia Today TV network host said was “indistinguishable” from Russian state media.
As the war in Ukraine raged on, Carlson interspersed his criticism of Zelensky – who he has likened to a “strip club” manager – with softball interviews with Putin and other Russian politicians alongside propaganda-style videos of Moscow grocery stores and subway stations.
Speaking at length about Carlson, Zelensky told Morgan that the right-wing commentator was essentially just echoing Putin and engaging in whataboutism by accusing him of being a dictator.
“Putin has a narrative on elections, on my legitimacy, on dictatorship. That's from a person who is 30 years in power!” Zelensky exclaimed.
He added: “The bloody dictator, murderer who violated territorial integrity of Ukraine ... All that is Putin's narrative. And regrettably this, this blogger or journalist, whatever he wants to call himself, he unfortunately fully repeats the words of Putin and what he wants. He works for Putin because he wants to lower me to the level of Putin.”
The Ukrainian leader also addressed Carlson’s accusations one by one, starting with the claim that he murdered his political opponents. According to Zelensky, the only thing that was even close was the exile of former Ukrainian lawyer and politician Viktor Medvedchuk.
“Nobody killed him. He was arrested by the Security Service of Ukraine, and in time, we exchanged him [with Russia] for 200 Ukrainian military personnel,” Zelensky stated. “So I'm not aware of which opponents he speaks. All my opponents are the opposition, all the opposition that was there when I became the president. It is all there in the Ukrainian parliament, and even this party that was the party of Medvedchuk ... whom we exchanged, those MPs are in Parliament.”
Once again accusing Carlson of doing the Russian autocrat’s bidding, Zelensky then called for the ex-Fox News host to do more research on his country.
“It seems to me that to this journalist, I do not remember his surname, excuse me, Tucker. Yes, yes. Tucker is his name,” he fumed. “It seems to me he needs to more deeply understand what's happening in Ukraine, to stop working for Putin, to stop licking his a**.”
As for Carlson’s dictatorial allegations, which the conservative podcaster ties to Ukraine pausing elections last year, Zelensky cited the ongoing war and implementation of “martial law” as the reason why the nation can’t currently hold elections.
“How can people in the occupied territories vote, millions of people?” Zelensky noted. “How will eight million Ukrainians vote that are abroad, because of the war? Undoubtedly the war will end. The hot stage of the war will end, and then when martial law ends, then definitely elections will be called. That is needed.”
He concluded: “We are defending democracy, so that is needed. But please understand one thing today, everybody understands: that if we stop martial law now, that is what Putin wants. That will mean that our army, in the majority, will come back home ... if there is no martial law, they will come back to their families and they will come back home. Who will be protecting us?”
