put u.s. nato jets in the air enforcing a no fly zone, they will be going nose to nose with russian fighter aircraft down that path, the potential for a miscalculation in a war between nato and russia and a war between russia and the united states rises significantly. i implemented a no-fly zone. i know how to do this. i did it in libya in 2011. can we do it? sure. should we? not yet. final point, chuck, what we ought to do is give the ukrainians the ability to create a no-fly zone, more stringers, more missiles that can go higher than stingers, and above all get the mig-29s in their hands. do our nato allies, against the russian jets, have enough of them to give the ukrainians a chance at air superiority? yes. take a look at nato combat aircraft.
action one way or another irrespective of what they do, but everything we ve done, the approach starts with coordinating allies and partners. all right. another way of ratcheting things up on the russians is zelenskyy suggested terminating russia s status. preferential trading status, most favored nation status. is that something we re considering? look, chuck, let me say this. there are a series of things that are out there that we re looking at to continue to ratchet up the pressure on vladimir putin for the purposes of getting him to end this aggression against ukraine, to stop this war, to stop the killing, to stop the suffering. and there are, as i said, extraordinary measures that we ve already taken. we said many months ago, when all of this started, and we warned that putin was threatening this aggression. we said if he pursued it, there would be massive consequences for russia, and we ve delivered on that promise. you see it again in everything that s happening to the russ
nations who have these russian-made planes donate them to ukraine, we re going to backfill them if they re nato allies. we would have to work on each case on its own merits, have to make sure we can do something if that s what the country is requesting in return for sharing the jets that they have. let s start with the ban on oil imports. i know as late as last week, there was still the administration was saying, no, we can t do the 100% ban. has your mind changed? has the administration s mind changed on this? are you looking at a full embargo on russian gas and oil? chuck, i spoke to the president and the cabinet, the leading members of the cabinet about this just yesterday from europe. and we are now in very active discussions with our european partners about banning the import of russian oil to our countries, while, of course, at
the same time maintaining a steady global supply of oil. the actions we ve taken to date have already had a devastating impact on the russian economy. we see the ruble in freefall, we see the economy heading into a deep recession, we ve already had a major impact. but we are looking, again, as we speak, in coordination with allies and partners at this prospect of banning oil imports. it s interesting you added the in coordination. we will not do this unilaterally, the united states is not going to do this unilaterally? a hallmark of everything we ve done to date has been in coordination with allies and partners. we are much more effective across the board when we re doing things together in as close coordination as possible. there are instances where we each do something a little bit different, but it complements the whole. in the first instance, we want to make sure we re acting in coordination. i m not going to rule out taking
but if there are things that remain to do to increase the pressure, if he s unwilling to stop the aggression, we re going to do them. so we will look at each and every one, decide together with our allies and partners what s most effective, when we should do it, and we ll proceed in that way. i want to talk about the no fly zone. let me quote president zelenskyy on telegram on friday. he essentially sent this out on social media. all the people who will die starting this day will also die because of you. he s addressing the west. because of your weakness, because of your disunity. today the alliance leadership gave the green light to further bombing of cities by refusing to make a no-fly zone. i understand it s an emotional statement. i understand you ve had different conversations there. why not rule out the no fly zone? why not make putin think it s possible? first, again, my admiration for president zelenskyy has no