form of brutality because this will not simply be some conventional war between two armies. it will be a war waged by russia on the ukrainian people to repress them, to crush them, to harm them. what is this going to look like? this is what i m afraid of. i tweeted about this, chris. i lived in bosnia right after the war. it was a brutal, blood di war very intense in 92, 93, and brought it to an end in a 95. it took so long. i m afraid it will be a grinding, brutal war. this is why i m really glad that the administration went to the united nations because the answer to russia has to be concerted diplomatic pressure. they need to have the light shined right on them, and think need to be told to stand down and need to be told they will be held accountable by the entire world, not just the united states, european allies, and japan. obviously, ambassador, we haven t spoken a whole lot about
morning on morning joe. for now, chris jansing picks up the coverage. hi, there. i m chris jansing live at msnbc headquarters here in new york city. it is monday, february 21st, president s day. and we have got a lot to get to. this morning white house officials tell nbc news that president biden has agreed in principle to a summit with russian president vladimir putin, a last-ditch effort to stop a war that some argue has already begun. secretary of state antony blinken and his counterpart, sergey lavrov, plan to lay the groundwork for the summit thursday unless russia invades ukraine before then. and, in fact, nbc news has confirmed that u.s. intelligence shows russian military officers have been given the order to do exactly that. while we haven t seen russian soldiers actually cross the border, heavy shelling has been pounding eastern ukraine all
been seeing through the weekend on russian television. russian television almost moving to a war footing and making unverifiable claims of attacks on eastern ukraine, even today claiming that the group of ukrainians tried to cross the border into russia. again, automatic of this looks like the drumbeat of war, looks like the russian media and government preparing the russian people for war, or maybe they re still just threatening. evelyn, let s talk about the potential military signs of how you see this developing. do you see it potentially as a slowly developing isolated incursion and putin sends some back to the east, the separatists? or do you expect what president biden indicated, kind of a blitzkrieg attack on the capital itself? chris, up until president biden said what he did on friday, i was convinced that vladimir putin would use his military, seize the area in the
weekend. ukraine s military says two soldiers have been killed. russian-backed separatists say ukrainian attacks killed civilians but the ukraine military said last night that separatists have been firing artillery at their own people with the goal of blaming ukraine. richard engel has more. reporter: these may be the opening shots of the war that could tear up the map of europe. russian-backed separate ipss fighting in a largely ignored conflict for eight years against the ukrainian government have dramatically stepped up artillery and mortar attack, firing on houses seemingly at random in government-head areas. villagers tell us ukrainian forces are firing back. a security guard at a fish cannery says he just left his house when an artillery round exploded. it came, he said, from the separatist areas. but over the fields in