I wasn't going to watch it but I realize that I would be ignorant and irresponsible as a citizen to not. I watched it in 1.5x, here are my initial thoughts:
1) Putin gave the lengthy history monologue at the beginning to basically make Tucker uncomfortable. "Would this be the extent of this major interview? A 30 minute history lesson from Putin?" He was using a classic Russian strong arm "I'm in control don't you forget about it". Tucker had to fear that he would be duped into this and come home with little of an interview. To both peoples credit they did at least talk for 2 hours.
2) His re-enactment of history is impressive in volume, I can't speak to any of its accuracy as I'm not an expert on Russian history, except, his characterization of Germany and Poland before WWII is most certainly incorrect.
He suggested that Poland collaborated with Hitler. Now, there may have been some factions, as there were in any nation, but no way in hell did Poland elites "invite" Germany to attack Poland, A blitzkrieg vs literally an army on horseback. Furthermore, what makes this assertion even more suspect is that there is no way that Polands elite would know if France and England would have come to their defense per their pact which would have ruined any colloboration. Even Hitler has been quoted as telling his generals that if France and England get involved you must retreat. This levels of cowardice and lack of spine by the West when they did NOT keep their word, per their pact; lead to 40M or so dead (my numbers are based on memory). These same Europeans now call out Trump on NATO, when they themselves have a history of violating their obligations. Trump did not and will not leave NATO, he will make them pay their dues and buy U.S military goods.
3) Putin only provides this interview with purpose, probably multi-pronged: to get out his message, for propaganda purposes domestic and primarily in the West, and, possibly out of his own lack of confidence in his position. He is a shrewd operator, but, he has some opposition and increasing lost faith in the war as Russian parents don't like having their kids come home in bodybags. I suspect he is reaching because he knows this war may take too long for him politically and will keep Russia stuck in another quagmire as they experienced in Afghanistan.
4) The timing also is interesting as the end of winter is near and Ukraine and Europe survived it. This should have been theoretically the worst of times for Ukraine and it cannot have gone unnoticed.
5) It is clear that Americas main threat by a mile is China, as some of us have said and for which I give Biden and Blinken credit for wisely seeing when they pulled out of the M.E (haphazardly as it were). Russia is going to be subservient to China, America would be wise to weaken China which would as a function weaken Russia. Putin keeps raising China up in his interview as he fears them also in a different manner being on their border. Regardless, he is also signalling the facts to the world, "we may be bad, but my Big Brother is worse".
6) The whole neo-nazi argument is tiring and silly. He didn't attack Ukraine to confront neo-nazis. I could far quicker accept his argument regarding Ukraine and NATO being the reason before I would believe this. They want territory. I am willing to bet even China hopes they fail as they want a wounded Russia. The West needs to balance this and stop throwing our industries away while we weaken ourselves domestically by throwing norms under the bus.
In the end, Putin does expose one fact, he is willing to get into the ring quite publicly for a very long period of time and he understands the world and history better than our Western leaders. He is good at manipulating people, he knows when he speaks and when Tucker speaks (at times), he is speaking to the U.S hierarchy/apparartuses and vice versa.