to russia, nbc news international affairs analyst michael mcfaul. also columnist and associate editor for washington post david ignatius, former aide to the george w. bush white house and the state department s elise jordan. mr. ambassador, let me begin with you. we heard keir s reporting about business leaders. obviously very upset about the invasion. we saw the protests on the street last night, protests throughout russia. we ve heard interviews of russians on the streets speaking out against this invasion. mika and i spoke to a business leader in america who told us that his russian those that worked throughout russia for his corporation were just the reports were coming back is they were despondent. they were aghast. petrified. they were petrified by what was going on.
teenager who is on track for another gold medal at the olympics. a lot to cover this morning. with us for all of it, we have former aide to the george w. bush white house and state departments, elise jordan with us. the host of way too early and white house bureau chief at politico, jonathan lemire. and msnbc legal analyst charles coleman. along with willie, joe, and me. of course, willie, you have the top story this morning. yeah. it is an incredibly busy morning, and we ll start with president joe biden promising to give diplomacy every chance, in his words, to prevent russia from invading ukraine again. but he s warning skepticism about moscow s intentions, and an invasion remains distinctly possible, he says. in a speech yesterday, biden said it is too early to assess moscow s claim that it is pulling troops from ukraine s border. the u.s. has not verified that. yesterday, the russian government publicly proposed to continue the diplomacy.
could be a place that is subject to russian attack. but i do think this is a process we have to think of playing out over months, maybe over years, but what comes out of it is the shape of the world we re going to live in. that s why it is crucial that people not lose hope, not look for easy exit ramps because those could take us to a very dark place. well, and the cold war went from 1947 to 1991. so when joe biden is talking about waiting a month to see how these sanctions go and reporters at the white house are shocked and stunned and deeply saddened, you actually wonder if they have any sense of history at all, that you re not going to put sanctions down and stop vladimir putin from going into a country or turning around magically.
putin would invade, a large-scale military invasion of ukraine, the u.s. would have options to do things like cut the internet in russia, cut the power, the kinds of things and, by the way, there would be options that would be much more aggressive than what we are reporting on, but the kinds of things that would be disruptive. they would have an impact on russian society but they wouldn t be long term, they wouldn t be permanent. they re the kind of things that send a signal or send a message to russia. that being said that at this point the officials who ken delaney and i spoke with said no decision has been made, the biden administration has not made any kind of decision to actually do any of these options. i should say the white house pushed back pretty hard saying they re not really considering any of these options but we have been told according to a number of officials they were presented to the president and they were potential ways the u.s. could respond in the cyber world. t
after characterizing russia s moves assen invasion, the white house is expected to come down with the mother of sanctions. you ll hear that in president biden s remarks soon. he ll also likely use a speech to explain to americans why a russian invasion of ukraine matters to them. joining me for his perspective is steven hadley, served as the national security adviser in the george w. bush white house. he was there in the russia-georgia crisis, which this looks familiar now to. good to see you, sir. nice to see you. nice to be with you. let s start with the parallels the breakaway republics, the acknowledging of that, the pretext. it seems as if the administration now is looking at sort of they didn t ben