Carlson “is strongly requesting an interview with Vladimir Putin,” RT editor-in-chief Margarita Simonyan said Sunday on RT, a Kremlin-controlled international media outlet funded by the Russian Government.

Simonyan also said Carlson “was thrown out of Fox News even though he didn’t say anything especially radical! He just didn’t sing in tune with the rest of the choir. So they threw him out,” according to Newsweek.