all afternoon, this comes less than 24 hours after president obama announced the stiffest round of sanctions yet again. st russia. thank you, kristin. i want to go to michael from time magazine. we have news that vice president biden is confirming that the plane was shot down and suggested there may have been americans on board. what is interesting beyond that news, vice president biden has been the chief interlocutor between the americans and ukrainians. what role do you think he ll be playing back and forth? he s clearly the white house point person and he s been there three or four times in the past few months and recently for the president s inauguration in the ukraine. he s very close to the country and has represented us quite well there. i think he will be central to whatever they do. eugene, you heard kristen
information either at that time. this phone call clearly was arranged in advance of the plane coming down to talk about the sanctions yesterday and to the broader ukraine situation, president putin, we are told, initiated the call. it s unclear what it would have accomplished. putin complained to the united states and to president obama that they were misreading his intensions and unfairly treating him and so forth, but it is not clear what the actual purpose was because president obama isn t going to retreat on the sanctions at this point. eugene, let me just, before we go to break really quickly, john mccain said there will be hell to pay if this plane was shot down by russian military or separatists, the fact that there were 23 americans onboard, domestically there will be a great appetite as there always is on the right to litigate this as somehow a failure of the presidency. that goes without saying. but will there be hell to pay? i think within the republican party, you w
want to be more engaged rather than those who do not want to be engaged. after you blame it on president obama, what do we do? this is russia we re dealing with. there is not a suggestion that russia shot down this plane. it could be the separatists and the fact is that russia is influencing them and is inspiring them and is probably arming them in many way, but it s not in entire control of them and it s hard to imagine that any professional military, either the russian or ukrainian would mistake a malaysian passenger airplane for a ukrainian cargo plane or military plane or something like that. so if it s a bunch of yahoos who have connections to putin how do you get them to right. how do they pay? the new york times, peter baker, thank you so much for your time and thoughts, peter, eugene robbins onand julia yafi, please stay with us.