mobilization of military-aged men in separatists population in ukraine and the ramp he s building to convince his people that a war would be unpopular with the russian public is absolutely necessary. i think the other issue is the diplomacy doesn t seem to be leading anywhere in the sense that russia provided answers to the u.s. answers to their proposals and russia s positions have not changed at all. ukraine can t join nato. meanwhile, nato is beefing up its presence in europe and the ukrainian president said in europe he would join nato. there s not an off-ramp the road putin has paved to war here so i think we have to assume the worst here, unfortunately, in this circumstance. so, let me push back ilgts that, obviously, because we just played some sound from the vice president, flying back to the united states right now, saying we still are pushing towards a diplomatic end. we know the president still very much wants diplomacy.
what did putin say? macron called me and said you should take a minute with president biden. so what will he give me? and putin answered the question by saying, macron could not tell me. he said, you know, maybe this was something that could be worked out between sergey lavrov and secretary of state antony blinken. but what we re seeing is anything that could have been put on the table in those last-ditch conversations over the weekend was not even there. there is nothing really that would seem to be available to build a narrative, a diplomatic narrative off-ramp around. putin today has killed off the minsk stores. the chance of diplomacy doesn t seem to be within reach. that s a desperate state of
certain folks in the white community that black people do not belong in your town. that they do not belong on your street. that they do not belong in your kids school or in your neighborhood. maybe not even in the country. remember, there were white folks that wanted barack obama to show his papers just to actually be able to be in the white house because there are a lot of white folks who don t think black folks belong anywhere that we don t want them to be. i want us to not lose sight of the bigger picture that this country, for a very long time, has sent the message to people like the mcmichaels and mr. bryan that what they did was perfectly legitimate. that doesn t let them off the hook. but what it means is that we as a country have some soul searching to do because what these three defendants did was they learned the lessons of their country. it is not just their racism. it is our cultural and social crisis of racial bias that s been here for a lot longer than those three men ha
diplomatic solution to this. we do not believe that there is a military solution to this. we have just gotten out of a never ending war in afghanistan. and two nuclear powers going up against each other would be catastrophic for the world. that s why we have emphasized the diplomatic solutions and humanitarian aid. i think we have to continue to do that. diplomacy doesn t stop when the shooting starts. that is actually the most important time for us to continue the diplomatic push, and i think the sanctions are a nonmilitary way, unprecedented sanctions, are a nonmilitary way to make the cost and the consequences of what putin is doing clear to him. and so this is a tough time, but yes, i think the president has handled this generally very well. and really pushing for a diplomatic solution. actually pushing against even people in his own democratic party who wanted to push sanctions early on before anything had even happened, which would have simply
1997 levels. all the things we ve heard before. so that avenue of diplomacy doesn t look particularly open. and at the same time, the military gap, particularly in that donbas separatist area, that s growing wider. so it seems even more unlikely that zelensky, the ukrainian president, would actually reach out and do what putin is telling him to do and speak to those separatist leaders. there are many reasons he won t do that. but it s not happening, and that appears in putin s mind potentially to have been a key to de-escalating this. at the moment, the military forces really do seem poised. russia s forces poised right around ukraine. all right. nic robertson, arlette saenz, thank you. we ll check back with you momentarily. for now, let me broaden out this conversation with steve hall, a cnn national security analyst and former chief of russia operations for the cia. michael is a senior fellow for the atlantic council and former spokesperson for the