reassure the rest of the world. how bizarre? yes. and this has to be the question for dan coats, for john bolton, fiona hill, sitting in on that meeting as well, the later meeting with president putin is, what do they do now? having made their own positions clear, having produced, we re told, 100 pages of documents so that the president could go in and have a tough meeting with vladimir putin and raise issues like crimea and put the u.s. position on crimea and had that dizar moment in the press conference yesterday where we had vladimir putin putting donald trump s position on crimea. donald trump didn t even put his own position on cry mimea and w do all of those people do? in the face of fair criticism from the republican party and the republican establishment, even the wall street journal says today this was a personal, a national embarrassment in their editorial, that trump
ukraine or cry mimea, sir, the t is long. that s russia, china, and iran. they re trampling over our interests and those of our allies. this administration, particularly after the national security strategy was written last year has decided to confront all three of those. we re going to be about that business for some time. we re going to continue to do things like this. when it comes to russia, bill, i think the president doesn t want to forfeit the relationship with putin. he doesn t call him out by name as a thug and a bully. i think he s itching to get in a room with him, to be able to talk to a guy like this, because i think he has familiarity with dealing with people like this and to see if he can work something. move from competition and confrontation to competition and cooperation. that s kind of what he s trying to do. bill: you touched on this. that s your theory as to why he doesn t mention putin by name.
trump to the kremlin. what does it show about russian foreign policy more generally? ever since the united states imposed banking sanctions on russia, together with their opinion in response to the illegal annexation of cry mimea the key plan has been removing sanctions. it is a credit crunch for the russian economy. growing like an emerging market. they are freeing the bonds that. so it has been an absolute priority leading to the daring operations which have seen them raech out to not only washington, but other capitals to attempt to flip these
meanwhile, the ukrainian government says that the pro russian militias are not standing down, because they are russian troops and they gave the european monitors photographs to prove it. they claim that the militia men in those photos are the very same men that they used to take over crimea last month. let s bring in our national security correspondent karen from the new york post. thank you. and kiev says that they show a russian takeover in disguise, but is that what is happening? is that what president putin is planning? well, i think that what the west is saying and the ukrainian government is saying is that we have seen this movie before, and we saw it in cry mimea where th were allegedly russian special fosts on the ground, and the
vladimir putin to the russian oil monopoly there, but also the fact that the deal was signed at his vacation home in sochi. it s obviously something that s very important to him. one of the things that i wonder about that from an american perspective is how much pressure exxon will put on the american government to not jeopardize that deal? how does american corporate power function in our decision-making about issues like this? well, my guess is it s not just exxon but a variety of american companies and a variety of european companies that are doing business in russia are talking to the american government and the european governments and saying, please don t go there in terms of sanctions. you know, but at some point if the west is going to be serious about making clear that what vladimir putin did in cry mimea that really violates that fundamental post-war rule that you don t use force to seize a neighbor s territory, you know, we re going to have to make some tough decisions whi