Tucker Carlson sided with Putin over Ukraine, saying Biden is wrong to try to stop a Russian invasion

• The Fox News host Tucker Carlson said Tuesday that Russia was right to mobilize troops near Ukraine.
• Russia is amassing troops at Ukraine's border, and US officials are warning of an invasion threat.

The Fox News host Tucker Carlson on Tuesday sided with Vladimir Putin over Russia's military activity near Ukraine, saying the Russian president "just wants to keep his western borders secure."

In recent months, Russian troops and artillery have gathered in large numbers at Ukraine's borders, with officials in Kyiv and Washington warning that Moscow could be preparing an imminent invasion.

Russia has denied plans to invade and has said it was just responding to Ukrainian and NATO aggression.

NATO has expressed willingness for Ukraine to join the bloc, whereas Russia has long opposed any NATO expansion. Putin said on December 1 that he wanted "legal guarantees" from NATO that it would never expand eastward.

In a 14-minute monologue on his show Tuesday, Carlson defended Russia's troop buildup and warned that the US could start "hot war" with Russia if President Joe Biden continued to threaten Putin.

Carlson then accused NATO, for which the US is a major player, of driving Putin to take defensive actions.

"At this point NATO exists primarily to torment Vladimir Putin, who, whatever his many faults, has no intention of invading Western Europe," Carlson said.

"Vladimir Putin does not want Belgium. He just wants to keep his western borders secure. That's why he doesn't want Ukraine to join NATO, and that makes sense."

During a Tuesday video call, Biden told Putin that the US would impose "strong economic and other measures" should Russia invade.

Carlson said Biden was risking war with Russia by being combative.

"There is nothing we could possibly gain from a military confrontation with Vladimir Putin, and there's very much we could lose, including of course many thousands of American lives," he said earlier in his monologue. "But that doesn't mean Joe Biden won't do it."

Carlson has questioned the validity of supporting Ukraine over Russia in the past.

"Why would we take Ukraine's side and not Russia's side?" he said on November 10. "It's a sincere question. If you're looking at America's perspective, why? Who's got the energy reserves? Who's the major player in world affairs? Who's the potential counterbalance against China."

Though Ukraine has been independent since the 1991 fall of the Soviet Union, some Russians believe that it should be part of Russia.

In a 5,000-word essay published in July, Putin wrote that Russians and Ukrainians were "one people" and that Ukraine needed Russia.

"I am confident that true sovereignty of Ukraine is possible only in partnership with Russia," he wrote.

Putin showed evidence of that belief in 2014, when Russia annexed Crimea, a peninsula of Ukraine. During a visit to Crimea in May, Putin said the people of Crimea were with "Russia forever now."

Though NATO is yet to do so, Putin said last week that relations could sour if NATO troops or advanced missile systems were deployed to Ukraine.

"If some kind of strike systems appear on the territory of Ukraine, the flight time to Moscow will be seven to 10 minutes, and five minutes in the case of a hypersonic weapon being deployed," Putin said. "Just imagine."