it is 29 past the hour. a live look at the white house as our coverage continues. more than 750 people were arrested during protests across russia yesterday. that s according to a human rights group. it has been tracking arrests since the start of the invasion almost three weeks ago. it says nearly 15,000 protesters have been arrested since february 24th. the demonstrations come despite the threat of lengthy prison sentences. earlier this month the kremlin passed a law against protesting and independent reporting on the war with a punishment of up to 15 years in prison. meanwhile, tens of thousands of russians are fleeing to neighboring countries in response to putin s invasion of
about the russians in 1993 you could overlay perfectly on putin in 2022. that he is a leader and it is a country that is fuelled by resentment, by just a constant need for expansionism, and the insecurity that comes along with making new enemies because of your expansionism. what are your thoughts? i don t know about brezhnev but i know about the country. i want to focus more on putin himself. if anybody is waiting for a moral awakening from vladimir putin they re delewded. they re deluded. if you want to look at what the mark is, look at footage from 1999/2000. it is levelled, grozny looks like dresden. look at the city of aleppo after
mr. putin can do what he likes as long as he keeps within the outlines of ukrainian territory. no one wants a broader war. but as russia escalates, mr. biden and nato had better be prepared to fight one. a reckless or desperate mr. putin may give them no choice. it is an interesting and very realistic point of view, because it is going to get, believe it or not if it is possible, much uglier. i have actually written an op-ed for the washington post that goes along the broad outlines of this, jonathan lemire. nothing original in what i m writing other than the fact he reflects what we re starting to see and what we ve started to see this weekend. fred kemp with the atlantic council, many others are saying biden and the west have done an admirable job. the economic sanctions are extraordinary. the flooding of weapons across
on in this man s mind, all i m saying is that you can look back through russian history and there are many people that have studied the soviet union and russia that say this has been going on for 300 years. uh-huh. i would say though at the same time there s also mikhail gorbachev who tried to create a society with greater liberties, greater opportunities for its people. that s part of the pictures is that gorbachev and that kind of view is viewed by putin and his cronies in the kgb and beyond as deluded, week and somehow a disaster for the country. you are right. there are examples in the past of totalitarianism and autocracy for centuries in russia, but i don t think it is baked into the cake forever and ever for
in part that s to set the stage to make sure the public knows what is going on, part is to ward off public criticism, but part is aimed at europe to say, look, administration officials told me in the last day or so the strategy behind that was to give europe some confidence. hey, do everything you can economically. do these sanctions but don t worry, the u.s. is not going to escalate this, therefore war will spill out further into europe. that s a signal the u.s. wanted to send to europe, hey, we don t want the conflict to expand. now, if putin chooses to expand it or if chemical weapons are used in ukraine or elsewhere in europe, that will change the equation. that s are meetings that the white house and officials in the pentagon are having around the clock right now to figure out what the strategy and response would be. katty kay, i thought about something you said last week about how viscerally europeans were reacting to the images that they saw on their screens because it reminde