shelling. both russian and ukrainian forces continue high level drills today and video released by the ukrainian defense ministry shows tanks and helicopters conducting the exercises. president vladimir putin will reportedly observe ballistic and cruise missile drills saturday. the total number of russian backed forces tops 190,000 soldiers. as for the developing story of civilian evacuations in the eastern part of the country, when asked if war was on the horizon, unfortunately yes. martha? martha: thanks, trey. jonathan hoffman joined me now, former assistant secretary of defense under president trump. jonathan, good to have you with us today. what do you make of obviously this is a flurry of diplomacy
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which is as we ve get intelligence about planning for such attacks, and our intelligence on russian military operations has been nothing short but exquisite. we released that publicly, as we are doing now, in the hopes that it will deter putin and the russian military from doing something horrible, like using chemical or biological weapons against civilians in the ukraine, as part of their terrible scorched earth policy. but we need to call him out on it, and we also need to present the facts, and the facts are that russia has three military biological weapons, that we know international inspectors have never been to. so it s clearly russia that is violating the biological attacks on weapons convention, not the united states. andy, thank you for your time in your analysis tonight, andy webber is the former assistant secretary of defense. we appreciate it.
i don t even know where to begin with probably this, but likely we have someone who does. andy webber was obama s assistant secretary of defense for nuclear, or chemical, and biological defense. he was the person tasked with finding, removing, and destroying syria s chemical weapons. he s also visited the research labs in the ukraine, that are the subject of this new by weapons conspiracy narrative. joining us now is andy webber, he s a former assistant secretary of defense for nuclear, chemical, and biological defense programs, in the obama administration. andy, thank you for being with us tonight. you ve been to those labs in the ukraine that this fuss is all about. what are they? well, there are public health labs, mostly, there are similar to our centers for disease control, we have been working with them, now, since 2015, or since 2005, actually, to strengthen their capacity to monitor, detect and respond to infectious disease outbreaks, and to protect public health
finding, removing, and destroying syria s chemical weapons. he s also visited the research labs in the ukraine, that are the subject of this new by weapons conspiracy narrative. joining us now is andy webber, he s a former assistant secretary of defense for nuclear, chemical, a biological defense program, in the obama administration. andy, thank you for being with us tonight. you ve been to those lives in the ukraine that this fuss is all about. what are they? well, there are public health labs, mostly, there are similar to our centers for disease control, we have been working with them, now, since 2015, or since 2005, actually, to strengthen their capacity to monitor, detect and respond to infectious disease outbreaks, and to protect public health and ukraine, and to be part of a early warning system of infectious disease outbreaks, so they can be isolated before