‘Borders Change All The Time’: Fox’s Jesse Watters Asks Why Should Russia Give Up Captured Land If U.S. Didn’t

Fox News host Jesse Watters argued Monday that Ukraine should surrender regions of its territory captured by Russia, insisting that “borders change all the time” and cited centuries of German and U.S. history as justification.

The primetime anchor made the comments on The Five while discussing President Donald Trump’s White House summit with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky.

Days earlier Russian President Vladimir Putin met with Trump in Alaska to outline his conditions for peace, which include that Kyiv legally cede territory in the Donbas and Crimea, much of which, but not all of which, is occupied by his forces. Zelensky has repeatedly rejected the idea, warning that acquiescence then only emboldened Moscow to launch its full-scale assault in 2022.

Addressing the demands, Watters framed Putin’s insistence on keeping the land grab as somewhat rational, based on U.S. history, and a demonstration of how “borders change all the time.”

“How are you gonna get Vladimir Putin to relinquish the land he won in battle?” Watters asked viewers. “The United States won lands in battle. We didn’t just give it back! No country gives back land they win in battle. That’s what this is all about.

“You have to accept reality and that’s what these Democrats aren’t doing,” he jabbed.

Watters then compared Russia’s invasion to Germany’s turbulent territorial shifts in the 19th and 20th centuries: “Borders change all the time! Think about Germany: it used to be the Prussian Empire, then it was the German Empire. It expanded, it contracted in the world wars. Then they divided it in two, and now it’s reunited. And they can’t do this to Ukraine? Come on, that’s ridiculous.”

The U.S. has kept some of the territory it gained in its history through war and purchase, from the lands taken from Mexico in 1848 – including modern day California, Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, Utah, and parts of Colorado – to Hawaii and Puerto Rico. But it has also relinquished some of its holdings, including the Philippines in 1946 and the Panama Canal Zone in 1979.

Some experts have criticized Trump’s abandonment of a ceasefire in favor of pushing for a peace deal, noting in one Truth Social post that the end to the conflict was in Zelensky’s hands, read by some as a nudge to accept Putin’s demands. Watters defended the president’s actions and slammed past Democratic presidents who he said Putin had “bullied.”

“Trump is just stopping the bleeding. Bill Clinton made Ukraine give away its nukes. Then he invaded Crimea, under [Barack] Obama’s watch and when Joe [Biden] said ‘don’t’ Vlad went into stronger. Trump is there to patch things up, and he’s doing it not by being bullied, not like the media says he’s being bullied, Putin bullied all these other Democrats in office,” the host continued.

“This guy threatened to nuke Moscow,” he said of Trump. “Think about it. He was going to bomb the be-jeesus out of their capital if Vlad tried this on the last watch,” he added.

Concluding he said: “Now, you can guarantee European soldiers to go under the front lines if Vlad gets this dumb idea back in his head, and we get the minerals and drone technology gets out of the Ukrainian military? Pretty good win!”

Watch above via Fox News.