The five most famous pro-Russian disinformation claims by journalist Tucker Carlson

Khrushchev was not Ukrainian and that was not the reason for the transfer of Crimea from Russia to Ukraine in 1954, it does not sell weapons to Mexican drug cartels and does not produce biological weapons, and Zelensky is not a dictator and does not ban the Russian language. This is disinformation from (pro)Russian sources, which is being spread throughout the American media space by journalist Tucker Carlson, which is also having a harmful influence on us

 

Author: Vangel Bashevski

 

Journalist Tucker Carlson is notorious for spreading disinformation from (pro)Russian sources throughout the American media space, which as a harmful foreign influence seeps among us (examples: here, here, here, here, and here). Let’s highlight five of his most important disinformation and analyze them:

 

Khrushchev was not Ukrainian and that was not the reason for the transfer of Crimea

We will start with the most recent case of Carlson spreading disinformation, which was his interview on March 21, 2025 with American diplomat Steve Witkoff, who is involved in negotiations on the war in Ukraine and who is also biased towards Russia.

Witkoff referred to the regions that Russia annexed in Ukraine: Crimea, Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson, incorrectly claiming that the local population voted for it in referendums, however, under occupation they cannot be legitimate and they were rejected by UN resolutions (see: here and here). Nevertheless, Carlson supported Witkoff, adding:

Khrushchev, kind of just made those part of Ukraine. 

It is not true that Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev took all of these regions from Russia and gave them to Ukraine, and Witkoff not only did not correct Carlson, but agreed with him. During Khrushchev’s time, only Crimea was transferred from Russian to Ukrainian rule, and Carlson made another inaccuracy about that Soviet leader:

I think Khrushchev was Ukrainian.

Behind this seemingly innocent expression of opinion lies disinformation dating back to 2014, and its goal is to blame Ukrainians for injustice inflicted on Russia and to justify its illegal invasion and annexation of Crimea, which occurred that year.

However, the 2014 annexation was not a just return of Crimea to Russia, but a reoccupation of Crimea by Russia. Russia had seized Crimea in 1783 from the Crimean Tatars, who it then persecuted, reducing them to a minority and replacing them with ethnic Russians. The Crimean Tatars even made a joint attempt with Ukrainians to free themselves from Russian rule in 1918.

Khrushchev was not Ukrainian. He was from the Kursk Oblast of Russia, and according to him and his close associates, he was Russian. His native village is near Ukraine, but he described it as ethnically Russian, and the fact that he worked in Ukraine and at one time ruled it did not make him Ukrainian, although he was jokingly called that and he liked Ukrainian folklore. The leaders of the Soviet republics did not have to be members of the titular nations of those republics.

The official explanation for the transfer of Crimea in 1954 was the territorial, economic, and infrastructural ties with Ukraine, and some believe that it was necessary for the development of Crimea, which had been neglected under Russian rule, especially after World War II and the persecution of the Crimean Tatars.

Others believe that the goal was also to change the demographics of Ukraine by including a significant number of ethnic Russians, and this was also influenced by the false belief that the USSR would never collapse and that Ukraine and Russia would be together forever.

 

Ukraine does not sell weapons to Mexican drug cartels

In his podcast of February 10, 2025, Mr. Carlson stated:

Second fact. Fact, not gas. Fact is, Ukrainian military is selling a huge percentage, up to half of the arms that we send them, half. And I’m not guessing about that. I know that for a fact. A fact. Okay. Not speculation. And they’re selling it. And a lot of it ends up with the drug cartels on our border.

Carlson offers no evidence for this, although he throws around phrases like: “It’s a fact”, which in themselves prove nothing. Several analysts have dealt with this topic: here, here, and here, and those accusations about Ukraine are based on a news story from a Mexican media outlet about drug cartels and their armaments, which was distorted by Russian propagandists. Ukraine is mentioned in the news, but not as a source for those weapons, but only as a country in which such weapons are used.

There is no evidence that Ukraine is selling weapons to Mexican drug cartels, which would be too complicated and unprofitable due to the distance, and too risky, as it could be discovered, which would be harmful to Ukraine’s reputation and its cause.

Moreover, Ukraine received mainly heavy weapons from the United States (HIMARS, NASAMS, Patriot, Abrams, etc.), which would not work for any drug cartels. However, Carlson adds the following:

Our Intel agencies are fully aware of this. You tell me they are not profiting from this. Of course. You think CIA is not profiting from this? Yes, they are. I can’t prove that. But I believe that.

Carlson even accuses the US intelligence services themselves of being involved in the arms trade that the US is giving to the Ukrainians, which makes no sense. Again, Carlson offers no evidence and even admits that he does not own any.

And, on top of that, Donald Trump, a Carlson favorite, who is critical of Ukraine and biased towards Russia, is now in power in the US, so why didn’t Trump stop that trade and expose it?

What there are indications of is that there are individuals and groups in Ukraine who, in that military chaos, are stealing some weapons and trying to sell them, but the Ukrainian authorities are mostly dealing with that problem and it is not big enough to even reach the doorstep of the United States.

This problem has been “pumped up” by Russian propagandists, who are believed to even be publishing such advertisements on the so-called dark web (a criminal segment of the internet where drugs, weapons, etc. are sold), in order to disgrace the Ukrainians, and it makes no sense for them to sell the weapons they need for their defense and survival.

 

Zelensky is not a dictator

In an interview with British journalist Piers Morgan on January 31, 2025, Carlson denounced Volodymyr Zelensky as a “dictator,” claiming that he was not democratically elected. However, Zelensky was democratically elected President of Ukraine in 2019, and the fact that he remained in power after the expiration of his term is not a dictatorship, but is based on Article 11, Paragraph 3 of the Law on Martial Law, according to which the term of office in such a state is extended, and according to Article 19, Paragraph 1, elections are not held. In support of the thesis that Zelensky is a “dictator,” Carlson also says that:

He has also banned religious denominations.

He has banned a language group. Those all seem like features of dictatorship to me. 

Here, Carlson ignores the fact that the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC) was until recently under the jurisdiction of the Moscow Patriarchate, which supports Russian aggression, so there are elements of a “fifth column” in the UOC and that is why the Ukrainian authorities have set a legal deadline for it to reform, because otherwise it will be banned.

And, contrary to what Carlson suggests, Zelensky did not ban the Russian language, and its free use is guaranteed by Article 10 of the Constitution of Ukraine. It is true that there was controversy over a law that overly privileged the Russian language in certain regions of Ukraine, and many were in favor of its abolition, as we have already written about, but this did not mean a ban on the Russian language.

In Ukraine, legal measures were also implemented to ensure the dominance of the Ukrainian language over Russian, because under the yoke of the Russian Empire the Ukrainian language was oppressed, and under the USSR it was perfidiously suppressed in favor of Russian, which continued even in independent Ukraine under the leadership of pro-Russian politicians such as Viktor Yanukovych.

In the interview with Morgan, Carlson also says that Zelensky:

He kills his [political] opponents.

Carlson said something similar in one of his tweets from March 1, 2025:

The Ukrainians have also murdered a number of people in various countries in political assassinations, and tried to murder others, including American journalists and a European head of state. This is all true, and it’s all going to come out at some point. Better to start blaming it on Zelensky now.

Instead of backing it up with evidence, Carlson says that “it’s all true” and that “it will come out some point,” which is beneath any level of argumentation.

He also blames Ukraine for the murder of pro-Russian propagandist Jamie White, but according to all indications, he was killed by criminals near his home in Austin, Texas. Carlson also blames Ukraine for the death of pro-Russian propagandist Gonzalo Lira, a citizen of Chile and the United States. He was detained in Ukraine for justifying Russian aggression, after which he was supposed to be under house arrest, but he violated this by attempting to illegally cross the border with Hungary. Lira was caught and ended up in real detention, where he allegedly fell ill and died, which is controversial, but there is no solid evidence that he was killed.

 

Western journalists did not ignore Putin

Carlson is the first American and generally Western journalist to interview Vladimir Putin since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, which has drastically worsened relations between Russia and the West. Carlson claimed that Western journalists ignored Putin and did not give him a chance to express himself, which Carlson allegedly provided for him for the first time. However, this was denied by Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, who revealed that there were requests for interviews from Western journalists, but that they were rejected as “unobjective”, which was also confirmed by journalist Christiane Amanpour.

 

Ukraine does not produce biological weapons

Carlson also spreads the conspiracy theory that Ukraine is producing biological weapons with the help of the US, but UN officials deny such a thing. Laboratories for such weapons actually operated in the former USSR, but after its collapse, the US helped the former Soviet republics control dangerous viruses in their laboratories. The US and Ukraine signed an agreement on this, but it is not for the production of biological weapons. The US helps such laboratories for both scientific purposes and to fight diseases, and there are such laboratories in Russia as well, and vaccines against Covid were developed there.

 

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