"The West is afraid of a strong China more than it fears a strong Russia because Russia has 150 million people, and China has a 1.5 billion population, and its economy is growing by leaps and bounds — over five percent a year, it used to be even more. But that's enough for China. As Bismark once put it, potentials are most important. China's potential is enormous — it is the biggest economy in the world today in terms of purchasing power parity and the size of the economy. It has already overtaken the United States, quite a long time ago, and it is growing at a rapid clip.

[...]

We have heard those boogeyman stories before. It is a boogeyman story. We are neighbours with China. You cannot choose neighbours, just as you cannot choose close relatives. We share a border of 1000 kilometers with them. This is number one.

Second, we have a centuries-long history of coexistence, we are used to it.

Third, China's foreign policy philosophy is not aggressive, its idea is to always look for compromise, and we can see that.

The next point is as follows. We are always told the same boogeyman story, and here it goes again, though in a euphemistic form, but it is still the same bogeyman story: the cooperation with China keeps increasing. The pace at which China's cooperation with Europe is growing is higher and greater than that of the growth of Chinese-Russian cooperation. Ask Europeans: aren't they afraid? They might be, I do not know, but they are still trying to access China's market at all costs, especially now that they are facing economic problems. Chinese businesses are also exploring the European market.

Do Chinese businesses have small presence in the United States? Yes, the political decisions are such that they are trying to limit their cooperation with China.

It is to your own detriment, Mr Tucker, that you are limiting cooperation with China, you are hurting yourself. It is a delicate matter, and there are no silver bullet solutions, just as it is with the dollar.

01:50 GMT
In a video filmed after the interview, Carlson said that it is insane for the US to expect that Russia will surrender Crimea to Ukraine.

"It's got a Russian population. They had a referendum [in 2014], they chose Russia," the journalist said. "You could like that or not, but the fact is that Putin would go to nuclear war if it came down to Crimea."

"If you really think that a condition [for] peace is that Putin is going to give up Crimea, then you're like a lunatic," Carlson said.

03:16 GMT
According to Carlson, Putin gave him a thick folder full of "documents."

"I got my nighttime reading," the journalist said, without describing the contents of the folder.

03:50 GMT
According to the Russian media, Putin gave Carlson the copies of letters of Bogdan Khmelnitsky to the Russian tsar. Khmelnitsky was a 17th-century Cossack chief who led a rebellion against Poland and later asked Moscow for protection.

Putin mentioned Khmelnitsky's letters when talking about the centuries of shared history between Russia and Ukraine.

Western countries are "trying to intimidate their own population with an imaginary Russian threat," Putin said. He added that "smart people understand perfectly well that that is false."

Carlson asked the president if he can "imagine a scenario where you send Russian troops to Poland."

Putin replied: "Only in one case: if there is an attack on Russia from Poland. Why? Because we have no interests in Poland, Latvia or any other [NATO member]."

Asked if he has "territorial aims across the continent," Putin said that "it is absolutely out of the question."

"You don't need to be an analyst to understand that getting involved in a global war goes against common sense. A global war would bring all of humanity to the brink of destruction."

Putin further argued that Western governments are using "scare tactics" to convince their taxpayers to provide more money to "weaken Russia" in Ukraine and elsewhere.

He recalled that, during the feudal fragmentation of Russia in the Middle Ages, Ukraine - which he described as being part of Russian lands - came under heavy Polish cultural, religious, and political influence. In the 17th century, the people of this region wanted to join the then-growing power of Moscow, but Russia wanted to avoid war with Poland.

Nevertheless, after a lot of deliberation, Moscow decided to bring this "part of old Russian lands" back into the fold, he said, which resulted in a war with Poland. Moscow reclaimed all of its "historic lands" during the reign of Catherine the Great, who ruled between 1762 and 1796, he recalled.

After the 1917 Communist Revolution in Russia and another war with Poland, Warsaw regained control over large swaths of western Ukraine, Putin continued. In the 1920s, the Bolshevik government established a Soviet Ukraine that "had never existed before."

The Soviet authorities were "Ukrainizing" this region, in line with similar indigenization policies pursued in other areas, the president said.

"After the Second World War, Ukraine, in addition to the territories that had belonged to Poland, received part of the territories that had previously belonged to Hungary and Romania... So, we have every reason to affirm that Ukraine is an artificial state that was shaped at Stalin's will."

Putin added that these nations in principle have the right to discuss the return of their former territories, but denied that he had ever discussed the matter with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban. However, he suggested that Hungarians living in Ukraine want to "get back to their historic land."

The UK has been bypassing its own ban on Russian oil by using a 'refinery loophole' to import millions of barrels of the sanctioned commodity in the form of fuels processed in third countries, the BBC reported on Monday, citing two separate studies.

A recent investigation by the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA) claimed that India and China, which have become the top buyers of Russian oil after the West banned it, are refining sanctioned crude into jet fuel and diesel and then re-selling it to countries across the world, including the UK.

Re-exporting processed oil is not illegal and does not breach the UK's ban on Russian oil due to internationally recognized "rules of origin," which define the country where crude was processed into fuel for commercial purposes as the country of origin.

However, the "refining loophole" comes in contrast to London's claims that there have been no imports of Russian oil since 2022.

Isaac Levi, head of CREA's Europe-Russia policy and energy analysis, commented:

"The issue with this loophole is that it increases the demand for Russian crude and enables higher sales in terms of volume and pushing up their price as well."

A separate research by campaign group Global Witness revealed that some 5.2 million barrels of refined petroleum products made of Russian oil were imported by the UK last year. Most of that volume, or about 4.6 million barrels, arrived in the form of jet fuel and was used in one in 20 UK flights.

Meanwhile, CREA estimated that in the twelve months since Western restrictions on Russian oil took effect in 2022, the UK imported some £569 million ($712.5 million) worth of oil products derived from sanctioned crude.

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