Russian President Vladimir Putin called out the entire Canadian parliament for celebrating a Nazi war vet while speaking with American journalist Tucker Carlson at the Kremlin Thursday. Carlson travelled to Russia over the weekend, instigating rumours he would interview the president. On Tuesday Carlson confirmed the interview and it was released Thursday evening. After spending more than 40 minutes speaking in great detail on centuries of Eastern European history, dating back to 862 and describing land reallocation, proxy wars and treaty deals through the First and Second World Wars, Putin said there are still Nazis in Ukraine today and they are celebrated as "war heroes." Putin thoroughly discussed the concept of “denazification,” the eradication of Nazi doctrine. "It is necessary to stop this practice and prevent the dissemination of this concept,” he said. “These were people who exterminated Poles, Jews and Russians." “I say Ukrainians are part of the one Russian people. They say, no, we are a separate people,” he said. “Okay, fine. If they consider themselves a separate people, they have a right to do so. But not on the basis of Nazism. The Nazi ideology." He then pointed directly to Canada’s government (at about the 58-minute mark) and used the Trudeau Liberal’s decision to invite and celebrate Ukrainian SS officer Yaroslav Hunka, alongside Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, to the House as an example of how Ukraine celebrates such such veterans as “heroes.”“Look, the president of Ukraine visited Canada," Putin said. "This story is well known, but being silenced in the Western countries. The Canadian parliament introduced a man who, as the Speaker of the Parliament said, fought against the Russians during World War II."“Well, who fought against the Russians during World War II? Hitler and his accomplices. It turned out that this man served in the SS troops. Personally killed the Russians, Poles and Jews," he continued. “The SS troops consisted of Ukrainian nationalists who did this dirty work. The president of Ukraine stood up with the entire Parliament of Canada and applauded this man. How can this be imagined?”“You say Hitler has been dead for 80 years. But his example lives on. People who exterminated Jews, Russians and Poles are alive. And the president of Ukraine applauds him (Hunka) in the Canadian parliament, gives him a standing ovation," Putin said. “Can we say that we have completely uprooted this ideology? If what we see is happening today. That is what denazification is, in our understanding. We have to get rid of those people who maintain this concept and support this practice and try to preserve it. That is what denazification is. That is what we mean.”Putin cited the the Istanbul negotiations, which agreed “and we have it in writing, neo-Nazism would not be cultivated in Ukraine, including that it would be prohibited at the legislative level.”“We agreed on that," Putin said. "It turns out it can be done during the negotiation process. And there's nothing humiliating for Ukraine, as a modern civilized state. Is any state allowed to promote Nazism? It is not, is it? That is it.”
