to that. because it requires not only a readiness if you impose a no-fly zone over all of ukraine, a readiness for nato to shoot down russian planes, but also to protect the nato planes that are carrying out that no-fly zone, that has to be readyiness to strike ground based air deeft assets not only with the russian invading forces in ukraine, but also an occupied crimea, belarus and russian proper. and i think that gets to pretty close to an all-out shooting war which it seems to me that nato wishes to avoid. yeah, certainly. steven piper, and natasha bertrand, thank you so much. i want to go to talk more about the situation in the ukrainian power plant joining me is james actin, codirector of the program at carnegie endowment for international peace. james, we know that operations at the plant are said to be
essentially, of nord stream 2. the fact this russia to germany gas pipeline is not going to happen. it is dead. and that is because they diplomatically convinced germany to seize the construction of that pipeline and in response to russia s invasion. so they do see that as a victory. but many people are still calling for those energy sanctions saying that unless russia really feels this in its most important sector, then it will be able to continue kind of profiting from the u.s. and european purchase of its exports and thereby continue the war. ambassador piper, i spoke to an adviser to president zelensky today and he expressed two things. they continue to call for a no-fly zone which seems to be off the table as far as nato is concerned. i m wondering about your thoughts on any possibility of that down the road.
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because he keeps repeating the same desperate requests. remember, zelenskyy, before he became president, was a television and movie actor. and i think he knows very well how to get a message at his audience. so, my sense is that he s been very effective when he addresses western parliaments and when he addresses the congress. and what he s trying to do is build continuing support. there has been a burst of western support for ukraine, so i believe now something like 30 countries around the world are provided defensive assistance or military hardware, including lethal weapons to ukrainians. he needs to sustain that. the west needs to keep that flow of weapons flowing to ukraine so that the ukrainians can do what they ve been doing for the past five weeks, which is defending their country. and they re defending their country far more effectively than the russians believe they would. you ve got to give the ukrainians a lot of president. ambassador piper, general,
understood president biden s message. it doesn t mean they re going to follow what he said, though. nic robertson, cnn, moscow. stephen piper is a former u.s. ambassador to ukraine, currently a research fellow at stanford university. ambassador piper, thank you for being with us. glad to be here. okay, so, this was an attempt, i mean, was it an attempt by putin to de-escalate the crisis over ukraine? if he wanted to do that, he could order a drawdown of russian troops from the border. instead, there is an increase of the military presence this month. so, is the phone call on the other hand the way there s a theory out there that putin wanted to size him up, see what his commitment is to ukraine before an invasion. how do you see it? well, i think there were a couple of things. what president putin was trying to do was basically trying to shape the conversations that will take place in about two weeks time. and the one bit of news is that the russians now have it confirmed tha