"It's not that the Ukrainian people want this. They are hostages of an unelected president who has abolished civil liberties in the country, banned the largest Christian denomination and jails people for criticising him. He is a lunatic and a tyrant." These words weren't spoken by a Russian spokesman, but by Tucker Carlson, on his own show.

Carlson said it in a conversation with American analyst Brandon Weichert, in a segment on the war in Ukraine and Ukrainian strikes on Russian refineries. His main thesis: Kyiv couldn't fight the war at its current intensity without American help. "There would be no Ukrainian war effort," he said, before directly accusing US intelligence services of feeding Ukraine data for strikes deep inside Russia.

"The only reason this continues is that the Trump administration, through its intelligence services, is giving the Ukrainians targeting information," Carlson claims. "When they hit a target in Russia, where does that information come from? Their services? No. Ours."

This is where fact needs to be separated from opinion. The US really did supply Ukraine with intelligence and other assistance for years. But the claim that American support is "the only reason" the war continues is Carlson's political judgement, not evidence - the war is driven by a far wider web of military, political and economic factors. And the labels for Zelensky - "unelected", "tyrant" - stopped being new vocabulary a long time ago. The only new thing is the voice: one of the loudest conservative hosts in America.

Trump and diesel

Carlson's words come after Trump publicly asked Zelensky to stop attacking Russia's diesel production infrastructure. "Mr Zelensky has to do one thing. He has to stop destroying the diesel in Russia," Trump said on 13 September, claiming that Ukrainian strikes on refineries are contributing to the global fuel shortage and rising prices. Ukraine can hit other targets, he added at the time, but not facilities linked to diesel production: "There are plenty of other targets. Don't hit the diesel. It's hurting the world."

That is exactly the statement Carlson used as the basis for his wider claim - that Trump has levers with which he could influence Kyiv far more strongly than he admits in public. Who really decides about a war fought on someone else's land? The Balkans know that question from their own experience - and know that the real answer is rarely heard in a TV studio.