starts. that s an information warfare campaign. i think the biden administration has done a phenomenal job of declassifying information, calling putin s bluff, saying any predicate he might concoct to invade is fabricated. in that way they maintained alliance unity, deterred putin, allowed us to close our embassy, move 5,000 troops to poland and send a clear signal if putin invades the west will be ready. i think the biden administration has handled this stage, stage zero, absolutely perfectly. jeremy bash and tom winter, stay with us because we will dig into the story that donald trump and his allies are claiming is bigger than watergate. bigger than watergate. lots of luck with that. we ll talk about the facts behind this story. by the way, there s so many things wrong on this cover, it is going to be it is going to be an interesting few weeks ahead. i hope you didn t watch fox news at all last night. oh, no. no, no, no, i actually spent
and demanded unanimously that the russian troops gathered on the borders of ukraine go home. the consensus created a good mood, an almost cheerful ambiance. instead of dividing us, the russians have brought us together, lots of people said. i heard versions of this several times, that nato should put up a plaque to putin, he s done so much for alliance unity. the memory of 1938 haunted the room, but it was rejected. at this munich conference there will be no appeasement. ukrainian president volodymyr zelenskyy was blunter, angrier, more bitter still. he flew into munich for a few hours, and the message he carried was not designed to cheer up the room. the architecture of world security is fragile and needs to be updated, he said. the rules, norms, laws and principles so highly praised by everyone else were not being upheld. the united nations charter guaranteeing every nation s right to sovereigty had already
they are hoping at the last minute, he will change his mind. jeremy, you are on the ground there, whereas the president we just heard a little clip of him saying russia can still choose diplomacy. my question is, do you have a sense from the folks that you are talking to, if that is the american strategy to rattle him, could it be successful? is there still a chance to avoid an all-out invasion here? well, here is what i think it has been successful at. it has been successful at constraining putin s options, delaying his march on ukraine, that has given us time. the time has been critical, because during that time we have been able to send millions of weaponry to ukrainians, we have been able to organize a sanctions package that would cripple russian financial institutions right out of the gate. it has given us time to get our people out and close our embassy, and make sure the americans are in ukraine, there are a number of them, are whisked to safety. and finally, it is time to e
ensure alliance unity. so i think that this face, what we call phase zero before the shooting starts, which is really the most consequential phase sometimes in a war. this phase zero of information, and misinformation, and counter misinformation, i think the united states is exactly right. i think we have done two things with respect to intelligence. number one, we have been very quick to classify intelligence, and call out the regime intentions of the kremlin. and second, as we have seen, they are false information his social media, we have seen it in realtime, and that has also allowed us to call it out. and in so doing, i think we have done a great job. i think that the biden administration has done a masterful job of constraining putin s options here. one seems pretty amateurish. why would ukraine attack the separatists now when the russian military is on the border, weapons drawn? it defies logic. do you agree with
publicly declaring the transfer of the jets as a possible cause for russian everything lagz essentially just make it that? it probably wasn t a wise thing to say and a lot of people put it in the same category as ruling out any u.s. combat troops in the conflict from day one. right? that we weakened our handpreemptively and this requests to just how difficult it is to maintain alliance unity. putin just has his own army and his, um, subservient ally in belarus to worry about. and they follow orders. we have to have consensus. we have to negotiate. we have squabbling and it s not pretty and that s only on the military side, right? we have to also worry when the economic pain and the blowback from sanctions hits, especially our european allies. we already see fishers in that unity now that say between the british and the germans and the italians and that is going to be hard to stay to keep united as well. so after that children s