this week president biden will be returning to the region, poland specifically, where he spoke after the russian invasion a year ago, and he s going to go there to renew the promise to stand with ukraine as long as it takes, but privately, administration officials have warned ukrainian officials that there is a limit to the patience of the american public and the western alliance. ukraine is asking for dozens of f-16 fighter jets, and addressing the munich conference, ukrainian president zelenskyy warned of fatigue. we need to hurry up. we need the speed, the speed of our agreements and the speed of our delivery to strengthen our sling, the strength of decisions to limit russian potential. nbc news chief foreign correspondent richard engel is in kramatorsk. you and i were talking earlier. russia is now engaging in a
well, the secretary of state met with wang lee late on saturday the first time since the u.s. shot down the spy balloon. i spoke with secretary blinken after the meeting, and i ll bring that to you in just a moment. the war in ukraine is dominating at the security council, more so than the balloon, if you will. the u.s. is worried that china may view a lack of resolve on ukraine as a potential sign of weakness as it eyes taiwan over reunification over the next several years. vice president announced that the u.s. determined that russia is committing war crimes in ukraine. gruesome acts of murder, torture, rape, and deportation. we have examined the evidence. we know the legal standards, and there is no doubt these are crimes against humanity.
president biden need to speak with president xi first? no. we didn t talk about that tonight. we really focused on the balloon incident. we focused on some other areas of concern that we have, and i noted the main one, which is the concerns about chinese support for russia and its war of aggression against ukraine. we also talked about the most recent north korean missile launch and argue that china, given the relationship that it has with north korea, should try to use its influence to try to curb these kinds of actions coming from north korea. i know we don t have a lot of time, and i asked a ton of questions on the war on ukraine. let me ask this one. i had robert gates on here a couple of weeks ago, and he thought the only real red line for putin was crimea. are we ready to if president zelenskyy wants to retake
crimea, are we going to be there to support him on that or is that something that we told him why don t you focus everything else first? chuck, at every step along the way, we ve said that fundamentally these questions about ukraine, about its future, belong to the ukrainians. these are their decisions, and we are determined to support them in their efforts to uphold their territorial integrity, their independence, and their sovereignty, but i don t want to speculate about the future. what i can tell you is this, it s really important, whatever happens, in terms of our own interests that there be a just and durable peace, and by that i mean this. just because if we have a peace that somehow ratifies the seizure of land by force, that risks opening a pandora s box around the world where they can do what russia did ant get away with it. durable in that what we don t want in terms of our own interests and certainly in terms
what else would you describe as lethal assistance that wasn t weapons? again, i ll let the information that we have and that we re sharing speak for itself, but the main concern is materiel support to russia s war effort that would have a lethal effect. the material support, i understand you want to let it speak for itself, but can you give me a little bit more? that is a huge charge. we re at another level of escalation here if our two biggest rivals are now in cahoots in a war essentially against the west. chuck, what i want to stress is this. we see china considering this. we ve not seen them cross that line, so i think it s important that we make clear as i did this evening in my meeting with wang lee, that this is something that is of deep concern to us, and i made clear the importance of not crossing that line and the fact that it would have serious consequences in our own relationship, something that we do not need on top of the balloon incident of china s engagement.