doing. it s true, crimea was taken. crimea is going to be a dead weight on russia. they are pouring billions and billions of dollars into crimea to shore it up. that s going to have an impact. the bloom is going to come off this rose. putin said i m going to deliver economic growth but in return you be politically complacent. the growth is drying up. so that compact is eroding and he has very hard choices to make. but he s also very popular for having grabbed crimea, and the question i have for you, i know speaking to people at the highest levels of the government, the prediction at this point is he doesn t invade ukraine. is that your view? does he stop short of that and just keep trying to destabilize ukraine? his goal i think is to destabilize ukraine. it s so delay the election. it s to disrupt the election you don t think he ll invade? he has troops poised at the borders. we ve seen him take engage in very dangerous maneuvers twice this week. he has that card.
control are you ruling out targeting i m not ruling anything in or anything out. and his vast wealth which has been reported as lately as this morning. what we re seeing is the people around him are being directly affected by the measures we re taking and the steps the europeans are taking. pull back here. what is the larger strategic interest for the united states? hone honestly, putin cares more about crimea and the ukraine does than the united states does in terms of managing the world. russia went in to a country and tried to redraw the map of the country by force. if we stand by and allow that to happen, that sets a terrible precedent. virtually everywhere else in the world, and we re hearing that in asia from some of our asian partners, even hearing it from the chinese. there s something else going on here, too. when the soviet union fell apart and a number of successor countries were left, including ukraine, many of them had thousands of nuclear weapons on their
for more on the foreign policy challenges facing president obama i sat down exclusively with former british prime minister tony blair. he issued an urgent warning about why the u.s. has to extinguish islamic ex trimism but first i asked him about ukraine. again, you ve looked into putin s eyes, as did president bush. he s already taken crimea. he must sense enough weakness that he s not backing down, he s not following through on this truce of a kind. what do you think his end game in all this is? i think that s hard to guge. i think what you can say is that the idea that he has is of a resurgent russia obviously linking up with russian-speaking people in the vicinity of russia. i think it s hard to know what the end game is, but i m absolutely sure that we re right to take a strong approach and to lay down some very clear messages and be prepared to back that up with action if necessary. now, i hope that as i say, i
down the path of provocation rather than trying to resolve this issue peacefully and de-escalating, there are going to be consequences and those consequences will continue to grow. with no end in sight to the crisis in ukraine and the middle east peace process in a state of collapse after israel pulled out of the talks, i m joined by one of the president s top foreign policy advisers, tony blinken. he s deputy national security adviser. mr. blinken, welcome back to meet the press. thanks, david. let me start on ukraine. you were here in early march and you made it very clear what the united states is doing is having an impact on russia. this is what you said then. what we re doing is bringing the world together to exert significant pressure on russia and to exert significant isolation on russia and his actions and the actions we ve taken in response are undermining that influence, undermining its economic influence, undermining its geopolitical influence. so you say. but he
are, look at the alternatives. he will be deeply engaged with them, but right now the bottom line is this, we can t want this more than they do so you re saying the united states would not advance its own peace plan. we need the parties to reflect on where they are and think about the next steps they want to make. tony blinken, thanks so much. for more on the foreign policy challenges facing president obama i sat down exclusively with former british prime minister tony blair. he issued an urgent warning about why the u.s. has to extinguish islamic extremism but first i asked him about ukraine. again, you ve looked into putin s eyes, as did president bush. he s already taken crimea. he must sense enough weakness that he s not backing down, he s not following through on this truce of a kind. what do you think his end game in all this is? i think that s hard to gauge. i think what you can say is that the idea that he has is of a resurgent russia obviously