let s talk about this now with foreign european affairs director retired lieutenant colonel alexander vindman. thank you for being with us to talk about this. this is really a pivotal time as we look at president biden considering this potential military move. what do you think about this? i think it s the right thing to do. we have to remember that this isn t the context of the russians positioning some 100,000 plus estimates, 120,000 troops on ukraine s border. and 10,000 or more into belarus. now, if you have them on the ukrainian border, that still puts hundreds of miles between russian troops and nato forces. once you put them into belarus, that s right on the border of several nato countries. else stoneeo, latvia, lithuania and poland, estonia.
u.s. capitol police and it s the kind of thing that when you are in a building of this cig tans, they re prepared to do on a daily basis and there are times these things occur and we don t report on them because there isn t the context that we re seeing now with what has happened in boston and the ricin letters. this is a public building. there has not been an evacuation of this building, the russell senate office building. there has been a clearing of hallways around richard shelby s office and a significant amount of activity from u.s. capitol police. we saw the gentleman with the bomb squad identification on and some heavy equipment rolling down the hallway to take precautions, but again, if you put some judgment in this, they re not evacuating this space, they re taking the steps they would normally take. it is part of the reality at the u.s. capitol. they have been on a heightened state of alert since what happened in boston.