foreign country. reporter: and there will be a vote on march the 30th. could be by the end of this month the people of crimea will have said, we don t want to be ruled by ukraine anymore. i think the vote will not mention russia but certainly say who do you want to be ruled by? three quarters of the people here in crimea speak russian and feel russian and feel it absolutely passionately and had it with kiev. you could find by the end of the month there is talk in the parliament behind me of then basically declaring independence and at that point you ve got independent republic uncontrolled by kiev and we re into again a whole new dynamic and we ll see what vladimir putin does. bill neely, at the center of it all. thank you so much. a programming note, i ll be on assignment leaving with secretary kerry flying overnight to ukraine reporting from kiev
georgia and to ukraine, part of what turned ukraine around from its pro-european drift back to russia was a $15 billion bribe from vladimir putin if the west eu and u.s. want to start matching that kind of money, it may lead them back in the direction most of the population wants, anyway. the options we have, can be punitive but almost nobody believes they are military. i think vladimir putin in the long run doesn t have many military options beyond crimea either. but we have to think about what we can do, not just how we want to look but what the actual options are. and without talking about what we can actually do is less productive than it ought to be. indeed. the other point is from putin s perspective, we ve been meddling but the bottom line, kerry is going to kiev overnight and he s dealing with a very fraktous
with our allies and secretary kerry is having with our allies because it s important there s an unified front on this. if it s going to be effective, it will require that. but there are steps, mike mcfall talked about that could be taken relative to the banking system that would have an impact on russia. the question is as putin weighs these things, how much the crimea and ukraine means to him versus those kinds of impacts. when you read the interview with president obama, it s very clear to me but must be even more clear to you, you ve been behind the scenes, that this president was elected with a mandate he thinks to get us out of wars and not into wars. that really does inform his responses to crises such as this. there s no doubt he doesn t feel force is the answer in every case. everybody agrees on that it s not the case here. over the course of history we ve had test cases of this.
and i m very grateful the prime minister would take the time to come visit. thank you. as we watch the prime minister speaking with secretary kerry, they are talking about a lot more than wine. they are talking about what putin is doing and what he is up to and maldova another former soviet blocked country bordering on ukraine. all of the issues you re exploring in the documentary have real resonance for the u.s. foreign policy for this white house and this president. when you think about the american range of options, there s all of this sort of chatter in washington about what president obama how president obama has to look and whether or not he seems muscular and tough or weak, that s esoteric stuff, there s no boots on the ground option here. the ukrainian government is not saying there s a military option in terms of respondsing to what russia has done. we can give money to them and
we ve been able to get new documents from the u.s. and uk that put the focus much more on resources, on what iraq had to offer, not what iraq was threatening to the u.s. or anybody else in the world. it s a disturbing documentary, i have to tell you, one of the more controversial and upsetting things i ve ever worked on but i feel it s getting at the question that needs to be answered. and rachel, while we talk about why we got into that war as you ve pointed out, it has an impact on every other decision we make, why the president decided not to go ahead with air strikes against bashar al assad on labor day weekend and that some would argue, not me, but some of the critics are saying that has influenced the way how foreign leader and putin view him. if you would stand by, we want to go to the state department, secretary of state kerry is welcoming the leader of competitiveness is key to businesses and to their economic