barrels of oil from the collective strategic petroleum reserves to try to cap the impact on gas prices. to try to blunt that impact. standing up for freedom has a cost. standing up for democracy does have a cost. but we have designed the sanctions specific lee to impose damage on the russian economy without much blowback damage on ours. that s what we ve tried to do with the sanction package. ron, every sort of public utterance about our approach in ukraine is couched in something that interests to our defensiveness. we had to do it but freedom isn t free. zelenskyy has dealt with two american presidents, one held congressionally approved military assistance with a country at war. the other is ushered in historic sanctions and has brought switzerland and germany to places that they haven t been. do you envision getting yourself on offense domestically on the question of president biden s do a ship of foreign policy? look, i don t think nicole i don t think same freedom is
president trump to this weird path of praising putin, as nicole was mentioning. this is something that has been happening not only during the trump administration not just months ago, but as recently as this past week. he was still praising putin, a genius, for starting this incursion. does the president go there and calling out the people who have been on pit inside on the right? joe biden president joe biden is not going to do that. there s a significant chunk of the speech that tonight that is it bad, yes, ukraine, he is going to talk about the battle between democracy and autocracy and how democracies can and are thriving and how putin is a threat to that. the people who stand up for that are not espousing democratic values. but he won t attack republicans. that is not his way. he truly believes he ran for president to bring the country together. he truly believes in this raising the bar and coming together, and i believe in that two. but i also believe these
nicole, i know that you have been covering this intensely as all of us have. we will be talking with ron klain in just a moment, and there s a lot to ask him. what are you thinking in terms of the stakes tonight? your political professional, you worked at the virtual view bush white house, you know how disses goes. the view from inside this white house, as you just set up, is unlike any other. we they are managing the country as it tries to sort of get off the mat from the last two years. as it s in this incredible transition. and they are managing and economy with some s bright spots but not that anyone feels. and a real problem around inflation. and if you talk to senior officials, senior advisers did showed joe biden, how is he thinking about this? he feels the weight of any leader of the free world. watching what is happening in ukraine and having been the chairman having worked on these issues his entire career at the senate, he knows so many of these players. and i think the
and morally simple. what we are seeing is wrong. now, the president is in this position, and i think he s on a very tough job. what nicole said about intelligence, i was joking last week that the last two weeks were like the iraq war and reverse. for the reputation of american intelligence abroad. it was, instead of saying all the stuff those prove to be wrong, here s what they re gonna do on monday, here s where they re gonna go on tuesday, here s where they re gonna go on wednesday, down the line. russia denying it every single time. we don t want to go in! no, the credibility that he earned domestically, and internationally, from that strategy, which was a high level strategy. it was a strange almost a real strategy to watch anthony blinken, president of the united states saying in minute detail high-level strategy. i think it bore them a lot of reputation will get. well diplomatically, internationally, nationally. and i think there is a real unity of purpose, domestically and i
weren t cutting, they weren t pushing, and the prices over the same as before. really, the siege of the city, if it is in fact and circled, that would change that dynamic significantly. but people can still come and go. cars are still able to come in and out of ukraine, and many people are taking advantage of that to leave. richard engel, joining us live from kyiv tonight where it s 3:30 in the morning. richard, stay safe, get some sleep, it s good to have you, my friend. chris, as we head toward the top of the hour and president biden s remarks, i was wondering, i think nicole put that question very well to ron klain which is, white point can the president talk to the american people about what s going on in ukraine? in a way that makes people credit to him for his successes thus far. what joy was describing in terms of the unity that he s been able to achieve, getting germany and switzerland to places they ve never been before. ron klain was bragging about