bizarre location, speaking in to a group of flight attendants, he sounded incredibly angry. he sounded detached. he was talking about how the ukrainians here are machine gunning people, that they re driving around in cars packed with explosives jihadi style, and he went very deep and repeatedly on this theme that they re fighting against the nazis. it s the angriest i ve ever seen him. richard engel in kyiv. richard, a reminder this is putin s war more than it is russia s war at least right now. kelly cobiella is on the border of poland. on the polish border with ukraine. the enormous number of people crossing over, how is poland going to be able to handle this? are we going to see refugees flown out to other countries because poland can t handle everybody coming over its border? reporter: chuck, the numbers are just astounding. we saw the numbers yesterday from the polish border guard.
ourselves. you heard secretary blinken, and that deal seems to be in motion, right, the trading of jets with the poles, right? yes. you heard zelenskyy saying, we re in favor of it if the entire alliance does it, too, which sounds like there is an interest in doing it unilaterally. is there support in congress for unilateral? i would say this, the people in my state of west virginia think it s foolish for us to keep buying products and keep giving money to putin to be able to use against the ukranian people. that s exactly what he s doing, so why wouldn t we leave? why wouldn t we show the resolve we have? i understand we have more in the world. but here s the problem, we have the ability to ratchet it up and give them the backfill. we are a million barrels short a day and we can do certain things, and we don t have to put any more pain on the american people already suffering from inflation right now, but i think the american people would if they had to seeing that they are
was saying and what the administration was saying in terms of the significance of this war, what it would likely mean, reshaping the way the western world operates and what we were doing. he was late on sanctions. he didn t initially sanction putin and lay down s.w.i.f.t. and didn t send the arms before the war that we re now rushing into kyiv. i think it s important, i was so struck by secretary blinken, he wanted it didn t make the news. it has been a shift in the thinking he s got to come out in favor of it. the question is are we just going to ban what the united states trades and are we going to sanction other foreign companies that do oil deals with the russians. and if we don t take that second layer, the first layer is symbolic. but remember, last year, putin made almost $120 billion off energy, when the price of oil was under $70.
stingers and javelins. that s really the critical next step. the next question is is the administration everything it can do? this goes back to the public opinion question. people will be favorable to the biden administration if there s the impression as we watch this play out on our screens, on our phones, that the biden administration is doing everything it can. i think there is a growing sense that they are not. if you look at what president biden said on february 24th when he announced this to the world, we are going to be doing something and be tough, and he said russia will be a pariah on the international stage. we are dealing with russia on the iran deal and on climate and the state department is giving guidance on the diplomats and what they will do with russia. they are not a pariah. we need to do more. it does seem, it s interesting, is this putin s war or russia s war, and there are some trying to create, hey, let s not punish the russian people but i don t know if you
you imply it was biden s weakness on afghanistan, and the trump administration, they tried to roll back sanctions in 2017, and tried to lobby congress to weaken russian sanctions and legislation in 2017 and tried to remove sanctions on russian oligarch companies in 2018, delayed chemical weapons sanctions that were required by law in russia and let s not forget holding ukrainian aid hostage for a political stunt. you don t think any of those things sent a message to vladimir putin that the west is divided and america is divide and he can get away with whatever he wants? you said it in every one of those things. you kept saying he tried, and all i know is what he did. i was personally there at the united nations when he got out of the iran deal and when he sanctioned putin and expelled diplomats, and refused the nord stream 2 pipeline. i watched what he did. he did stronger things against russia than republican or