sanctions if russia makes a military move on ukraine. let s get more on this from washington. i m joined by dr alina polyakova, president of the center for european policy analysis. thank you very much indeed for joining us. can you see, particularly after rather less diplomatic dialogue and more diplomatic dialogue and more diplomatic diatribes, really, can you see any sign of a peaceful way out? unfortunately, i think we are in a bit of a paralysis mode where the russian side has be quite egregious and unrealistic demands, the united states and european allies have laid out our concerns about those demands, but still, there doesn t seem to be a compromised across the horizon here. certainly, it is a positive sign that the russians did respond in written form and not public form to the us
position of the european union, and that crimea is not part of russia. just one more question on sanctions. if it comes to pass that there is a russian military move in ukraine, and severe sanctions are put on putin, there is no doubt that putin will respond by taking measures, economic measures, against the eu and nato member states. bulgaria is extremely vulnerable. your energy sector is dominated by gazprom, by lukoil, by russian companies, and you will suffer. do you think your people, 25% of whom say that they regard russia as an ally which shares interests and values with bulgaria, do you think your own people will be happy with that? so, sanctions and energy risk is a big issue. this is why we want to explore all the steps of diplomacy and all the steps of de escalation before sanctions are imposed, because you are absolutely right our gas dependency on russia is absolutely, like, it s more than double the one of the average of europe. mm. we also have dependency on the electr
the sovereignty of our three baltic nato allies. these are countries that join nato and the 2000 when president george bush was in office. george w. bush. and, you know, these three countries are small. they ve been for a long time nervous about russia. they were one of the first to be subject to cyber attacks by russia. again in the 2000s. so now we re sending more force there s. it s really important to deter russia from taking any military move towards nato. then we ll real you be at war, no cudding with, russia. the that is something we don t want any under circumstance because of, of course, nuclear power. but we will future russia. that s whole deal. that s what collective security is all about. it s been exacerbated by the new movement of troops and developers. because belaruse shares a border with one of the baltic states, with lithuania and poland.
analysis. it is a guessing game. there s a lot active chess playing going on. of course. how likely in your view are the odds the kremlin will say yes to the summit between putin and biden? i think that s the million dollar question. certainly putin in the past has really pursued this kind of summit level negotiation. with the united states. looking to make a big deal about the future security architecture: the u.s. is trying to engage putin. show that there is still something to talk about. so we re going to see that in the coming hours. as fred said. yeah, a lot of people said when it comes to this whole move by him. this military move, people said why now? why go so big given the risk reward calculation. what are you hearing about
trying to keep track of everybody who is trying to protest and come out against this unprovoked attack by russia on ukraine. first let s go to mike memoli at the white house for us where administration officials are reacting to the dramatic escalation from vladimir putin. as we promised, keir, we ll be talking about this. mike, what is the white house saying about it? reporter: alex, as you can imagine, the white house is monitoring every comment coming from the russian president and every russian military move. we re hearing from a senior military official and from our colleague courtney kube that there is no reason to doubt that vladimir putin has put the nuclear forces on alert but they re calling it escalating and unnecessary. they point out that the russians maintain significant military capabilities they haven t deployed yet. roughly two-thirds of the