it happen. there are some democrats who seem to agree. we see the biden administration impose sanctions on anyone doing business or involved with these breakaway regions. but we need to go further. germany now says that after yesterday they are not going to let putin pump oil directly to europe via the nord stream 2 pipeline. a move they ve been talking about. some in washington wondering when the u.s. will do something that hurts putin that badly. germany is learning the lesson. unfortunately president biden hasn t so far. stopping nord stream 2 is excellent and exactly what germany needed to do. a senior administration official pours cold water on a putin/biden meeting. if russia won t take military action when it looks like they will.
allow further expansion, and that, i think, is what ukrainians are worried about and why they re saying that sanctions need to come now before the situation escalates and escalates in a way that they think is predictable. richard, there s a washington post headline right now, just a few minutes old, that reads, putin orders peace keeping troops to separatist regions of ukraine. russian president vladimir putin signed decrees as moscow recognized the breakaway regions independence. we talked about that already but the notion of peacekeeping troops being ordered into the separatist regions with the agreement of cooperation between the heads of those two regions, that news, obviously, it s midnight where you are. when ukraine wakes up in the morning, and faces the reality of potential russian troops of this kind moving in, what will be the reaction to that in addition, on top of i m speaking not so much about what they will call for in terms of immediate sanctions but in terms
does very much fall in line with what we ve been, you know, led to believe how this would play out with the so-called false flag operations potentially laying the groundwork for something even more concerning, jim. looking into some of these videos and seeing evidence they were manufactured, not filmed on the days they were claimed to be f fi filmed on. the russian president on a national security meeting in moscow. he talked about the possibility you and i and others have been watching very closely, this idea of somehow recognizing those breakaway regions, frankly destabilizing for nearly a decade as independent. what did he say and is that considered a genuine possibility? reporter: for a long time, this was thought to be a sort of very distant possibility and not something president putin would favor because the so-called minsk agreements, the shaky
going further into ukraine. it s way too early for this. it s way too early for this. good morning. and welcome to way too early. it s way too early here, but in ukraine, it s practically lunchtime and we ve seen a bunch of developments there overnight. we re going to bring them all to you, including the news that ukraine is asking its citizens to leave russia asap. we re going to get to that, i m hallie jackson in for jonathan lemire on this wednesday morning, february 23rd. listen, we have news. you know the back story. the context here, president joe biden putting new sanctions on russia as he s denouncing moscow s actions on eastern ukraine. saying it s essentially the beginning of a russian invasion. and that speech from the white house, the president condemned vladimir putin s decision to formally recognize the breakaway regions, and send troops in. he said, listen, this is just the beginning, we re going to
breakaway regions of donetsk and luhansk. jeremy diamond is at the white house. one thing you and i have discussed is the unprecedented new approach that the biden administration has taken all throughout this which has been the transparency of putting out intelligence and declassifying intelligence almost in real time in order to try to stop putin from invading. what do you think we will hear today from the white house on this? reporter: yeah, that s right, kate. just yesterday, for example, you heard secretary blinken when he was asked whether he underestimated or the administration underestimated putin. he said, no, we ve laid out clearly every single stem of the playbook and, frankly, the words used last week are pretty closely mirrored here. we heard from president biden yesterday, of course, a warning this is the beginning of an invasion and he made very clear the russian president, in his words, is also setting up a rationale, as the president said yesterday, to take more