virginia. first, your reaction to the news out of belarus. shutting down, suspending operations in the embassy. the significance? the significance is it points to the growing involvement of belarus in this war. the belarusian dictator, lukashenko, has given up his country s sovereignty and made belarus an adjunct of russia. and that s an additional risk to ukraine. i will say, though, i don t like it when the united states state department closes embassies. i think we should be willing to take more risks under the circumstances. most of my former colleagues at the state department i think would agree with that. . look, we ve been watching very closely the progress, or in some cases, the lack of progress that russian troops are having in theiren innovation of ukraine.
if 6,000 have been arrested, 150,000 at least participated. so despite all the risks it s a very important message they are sending that putin does not legitimately represent russia. do you think it will deter putin, or do you think he may look at these protests and be hardened in his approach? . look, look, he s crazy. i mean, he has started this enormous war in europe without any reason, without any justification for it. it is senseless. i feel it very personal. i was among the experts saying he s bluffing. he s not going to invade. he is just willing to do some concessions for the rest of his military buildup.
his meeting with his prime minister, his first minister, his the head of the central bank, the head of some other banks as well as they try to figure out what to do with these sanctions. the stock exchange didn t change today. the ruble fell 30% at the beginning of the day. it s down to its a quarter of its values in 2014, for example. now, russians are used to seeing hits on the ruble. the middle age will have lived through the soviet union and the terrible time the ruble had then. 1998, the crash of the ruble. and 2014 as well when western sanctions were put on russia after its first invasion of ukraine. however, it does seem that the scale of the sanctions at the moment has taken the kremlin by surprise. they seem flat footed in their response. the spokesman for president putin said they had been
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ukrainian forces are wreaking on the russian troops. the fight obviously is far, far from over. some really unsettling new information. we have seen satellite imagery showing a three-mile long column of russian artillery, tanks, troops, making their way towards the ukrainian capital. for now the u.s. and uk believe that they are still at quite some distance. they have been fairly stuck at around 19 miles or 30 kilometers away. so it will be very interesting to see what that column of russian forces does. we ll be keeping a close eye on that. meanwhile, president zelenskyy and ukrainian officials asking everyone possible to join this fight. not just ukrainians of all ages but now an international legion as formally been created. they have gotten thousands of statements from foreigners who are ready to join this fight against vladimir putin s army.