doesn t want to escalate things. they ve been trying to repair this u.s./china relationship that significantly deteriorated throughout the pandemic, and that blinken meeting, which has now been postponed by the u.s. secretary of state of china, that was going to be a big political win for beijing, for xi jinping. meanwhile on chinese social media, the reaction has been a lot of mocking of the u.s. and some people even joking why shoot it down, it s just a lantern that blew over from this month s lantern festival. we know that both of u.s. and china already use surveillance satellites to spy on each other from the air. the big question remaining is why would china use a balloon? we still don t know if this was an accident, if it really blew over, if it was deliberate, if it was a test to see how biden and the u.s. military would respond. we also don t know if there were some bureaucratic problems and if xi jinping was actually looped in. but as you say, china is doubling down on this cl
ground in the capital city. latest from where you are. john, officials are a bit more reassured after the high level meeting today of blinken and lavrov, but still nervous as well. secretary of state blinken meeting with lavrov in geneva. lavrov called it constructive, blinken called it critical, after the muddled message from president biden and he did. demanding russia pull back troops, lavrov saying they are not invading. nonstarters for the u.s. ukraine probably appreciates the clearer line today coming from the u.s. and also approve of a new u.s. commitment of military aid. but take a look at what we saw and heard in kyiv today. puts its in perspective. what s called a memory wall
white house officials from the vice president this morning on the morning news shows to the chief of staff have said if russia takes aggressive action, it should expect severe and serious consequences. nbc s matt bodner is here for us. how is this all landing overseas? reporter: craig, good morning. well, there was obviously a sense, kind of a sigh of disappointment. you could feel it this morning among a lot of european powers and allies. especially some of the more vocal supporters of ukraine and obviously ukrainian president s tweet was evidence that ukraine wasn t exactly thrilled to hear that either. and the reason i think this particular comment is getting so much attention is because it s exactly the kind of thing that russia probably wants to hear on the eve of secretary of state blinken meeting with his counterpart in geneva. russia is signaling it s prepared to go quite far to
were being relocated back to their bases but that many other units in other regions were still pushing ahead with their military drills, so there is skepticism. nato officially has said that it is not seeing any clear signs of a de-escalation so being somewhat dismissive of the russian move, but i think one of the key things today, and kelly just mentioned it, vladimir putin spoke himself again at some length after the meeting with the german chance loss, and he did not sound like someone who was ready to de-escalate. he talked about how the west has consistently ignored his concerns about ukraine entering nato. he said that this needs to be addressed urgently, in the very near future, and he said that all things are interlinked so he didn t shy away from the fact that other russian officials have been doing that russia is keeping a military presence on the border. by the way, some russian officials are almost pretending
top of the hour. the phone call president president biden and french president macron has wrapped up. they spoke for 49 minutes this morning, this, of course, as tensions are escalating, possibly de-escalating in the russia-ukraine situation, and it comes really as a diplomacy blitz sunday way between all sides. we ve got secretary of state blinken meeting with his russian counterpart lavrov and putin meeting with the german chancellor today and once we get a rodeout from that call we ll let you know when presidents macron and bowden discussed today. we want to move on now. the trump organization has to find someone new to you do its books. the accounting firm says a decades worth of financial documents it had prepared for the trump organization can no longer be viewed as reliable. they say also they won t work with the former president owes company anymore. that s according to a letter that they wrote to the trump organization. it was released yesterday by new york attorney general