Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) argued Wednesday that Russian President Vladimir Putin—who ordered the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 while declaring that the country has no claim to independence and that its people are “connected with us by blood”—doesn’t actually want Ukraine because he already has “enough land.”
On far-right podcaster and former Trump White House adviser Steve Bannon’s War Room show Wednesday, Tuberville was asked if Russia would agree to a peace deal in which regions of Ukraine that Putin annexed would remain part of Ukraine.
After criticizing President Joe Biden’s diplomatic efforts, Tuberville tried to make the case that there is a lull in armed conflict in Ukraine because Putin has no interest in fighting there.
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“How many clips have you seen of a battle in Ukraine? Zero in the last 6, 7, 8 months? It’s one-sided. Putin’s just kind of sitting back watching what’s going on, wondering, ‘Hey, when y’all going to come over and we’ll draw a line here,’” Tuberville said, despite many Russian drone and missile attacks in that period.
“He doesn’t want Ukraine. He doesn’t want Europe. Hell, he’s got enough land of his own,” Tubervile insisted. “He just wants to make sure that he does not have United States weapons in Ukraine pointing at Moscow.”
Tuberville’s comments come as Putin himself has been trying to blame Ukraine and other Western powers for the bloodshed
"It's they who have started the war,” he asserted on the first anniversary of the invasion he ordered. “And we are using force to end it.”
