Russian President Vladimir Putin described the war in Ukraine as having “an element of a civil war” amid an unusual acknowledgment that Russian-speaking Ukrainians are fighting to repel his invading forces.

“What is happening is, to a certain extent, an element of a civil war,” Putin told Tucker Carlson, the ousted Fox News host who was granted an interview in the Kremlin. “Everyone in the West thinks that the Russian people have been split by hostilities forever. … The unity is still there.”