really going to be interested to see whether the world, the western world, can actually harness enough of a bite with the repercussions that they make this felt throughout russia. people at the pentagon believe they can. they believe president putin is going to sorely regret what he is doing. every time you talk to pentagon leaders, they say, it is going to open a world of hurt for him. i m curious to see how that plays out. michael, putin has crossed the line. he s done what a lot of people predicted he d do. the west responded with its sanctions, as it said it would. does putin care about that criticism, about those things that helene was ticking off that may happen to him? does he care about the implications of this? what happens from here? i think he calculated or factored this into his planning, right? you heard about this naryshkin thing. to put this into perspective, naryshkin is responsible for foreign intelligence gathering. he will play a crucial role.
you showed earlier, comments by lavrov and his concession, that, you know, it s best to negotiate with the united states. well, tony blinken, the secretary of state, has now canceled his talks with his scheduled talks with sergey lavrov because he doesn t want to be seen as negotiating while they re invading. there s a lot going on right now, but i think joe biden has played a not very good hand extraordinarily well. so far, he has done given the fact that ukraine is not considered to be america s, you know, national security interests, you shouldn t be able to get an american president willing to go to war over ukraine, and he s taken that off the table. but he has still managed to cobble together a pretty strong western response to this so far. michael, cutting russia off
crisis. it is it is absolutely disgusting, willie. let s bring into the conversation news director for new line s magazine michael weis, who covers russia closely and has for many years. i want to get into the sanctions, to ask if they went far enough and what the impact may be on russia. let s start where we began our show this morning. vladimir putin couldn t ask for better propaganda then the former president of the united states, the former secretary of state and cia director take his side here. it is one thing to say you respect your adversary. mike pompeo over-egged the pudding there. that was in an interview with the national interest, an organization that has had an interesting relationship with russia, also picked up on russian television. the irony of this, the war party that putin surrounded himself with, they believe this is the time to spoil for a confrontation with the west. because they think the west is in terminal decline. people who think that by flattering vlad
he already played a crucial role in shaping the landscape and informing the president of russia about ukrainian will to resist and all that. my suspicion is he told him, look, the ukraiians are putting up a fight. this is not a cakewalk. putin dressed him down in a savage manner. the equivalent of this is a slap with a fish on the eve of afghanistan. if i m in the pentagon or u.s. intelligence, i m looking, how do you exploit these fissures more? in many respects, putin is the man in the high castle. this is all down to him. the state is putin at this point. news director for new line s magazine, michael weis, great to have you in. thanks for being here. sure. how is china reacting? we ll have a live report from beijing. plus, former defense secretary leon panetta will join our conversation to weigh in on the biden administration s new