To declare victory without firing a shot. this could be one of them. how does ukraine respond to this? how does the appliance respond to this? this is very interesting. you re right. this is potentially a move that the russians could make. i don t think it helps them, actually. the minsk agreement that they re talking about here s an agreement that was negotiated at the point of a gun, at the barrel of a gun, under pressure of slaughter of ukrainian forces. president poroshenko had to sign that minsk agreement. it s lopsided in favor of the russians. and i think the ukrainians would be happy to see russia walk away from that agreement. it s a terrible agreement. so they would be happy to have it done. they won t be happy at any threats to their territorial integrity, which this would
Likelihood that it would, the russians throwing cold water on it, but if it were, it s big deal. you don t want to have a summit at the barrel of a gun. president biden doesn t want to give anybody reason to think this is another unit where you re trading away something under threat of force. on the other hand, he would be showing he d go the last distance for peace and that he would do whatever he could to find diplomatic solution short of abandoning the principles that ambassador taylor just talked about. and the information we re getting again, evelyn, to your point about intelligence, nbc news confirming the u.s. is warning, russia wants this list of dissidents, journalists, to kill or kidnap. i want to play what national security adviser jake sullivan said act how this will make this conflict even worse than many people realize. take a listen. it will cost the lives of ukrainians and russians, civilians and military personnel alike, but we also have intelligence to suggest tha
Of the country. they want to be part of the family of sort of western nations, or at least a sigma majority of the country wants that. and so to step back from that at the end of a barrel of a gun, as it were, quite literally in fact right now, would be a huge step back, a huge concession by the ukrainians. at the same time, i think it is fair to say that joining nato membership, joining nato, rather, nato membership, was not a realistic it was not on the horizon anyway for ukraine. and certainly since russia started building up its military forces, and sort of stamping its feet about that even being a possibility, you know, it is already become a situation in which when you talk about ukraine joining nato, it is just a dream. it is not going to be something that is even a medium term possibility of happening. ukrainian officials privately will confide in you that they
Forces that they have amassed at the border and just leave a fairson almost indefinitely to keep their guns and missiles pointed at kyiv, as a threat of psychological warfare and likely a scenario in the short term and as you pointed out and as i have been reporting, ukrainian officials have almost unanimous in thinking this whole thing was a bluff. they believe they understand russian president vladimir putin s psychology a lot better than we do. they think this is just his way of conducting brinkmanship. at the end of a bayonet or a barrel of a gun to gain concessions from kyiv in terms of reincorporating occupied territories in the east, to influence a russian direction for the company and remit gated 1989 and 1991, and the western security posture and so on. there are very few bright
Grows out of the barrel of a gun. i agree 100% and remember what putin s goals are for ukraine, three fold. first, cause massive economic harm, so the threat of war means that there s a lot of capital flight and investors are wary of putting money in ukraine. his first goal. the second to destabilize ukraine politically. look at president zelensky s poll numbers, they are not that good right now, and that s a factor for russia in advance of the 23 parlimentary elections in ukraine, and the presidential election in 24. and the third point for vladimir putin, veto power over the policy. a measure to vladimir putin to recognize those two break-away republics in ukraine, as independent nation.