sync. people asking questioned, already on the news cycle. i don t think one led to the other. i think the president said it. everyone who lives in this media environment and that would, in the 21st century said, that s going to be something we have to fix and clarify. that s what they ve done today. as i said end of the piece, you know, it was an expression of the president s outrage but i think now we have to get back to helping the people of ukraine win this war. yeah. okay. top nichols, awfully good to talk to you. how president vladimir putin s remarks made headlines. actual line putin cannot remain in power, also london, observer quotes biden the use of the word butcher to describe putin. here in the united states, banner headline. biden took aim at putin. l.a. times quotes the president above a photo of biden saying biden calls on the west to end putin s brutal dominance.
refugees, meeting with those who were concerned about loved ones and were in ukraine on the front lines. we saw someone drawing on their experience as a member of the foreign relations committee for decades in the winddown of the cold war. often it s an unscripted remark that can change everything and get all of the attention as senators were reacting to the president s comment that putin had to go. take a listen to some of that reaction. i think the president is making all the right moves and i think his comment probably was a very visceral one but not a call for a change in u.s. policy. he gave a good speech at the end, but as you pointed out already, there was a horrendous gaffe at the end of it. any time you say or even as he did, suggest that the policy was regime change, it s going to cause a huge problem. reporter: the concern now of course is whether this is seen as provocative, as escalatory on
is more of an existential battle of the russian people, the russian state. he s the defender and proponent of that country. we also have a mismatch of that statement from the president which i don t disagree with by the way. a mismatch of that and our policy. we don t want to escalate and feed the narrative of the u.s. and russia. we certainly haven t acted like we are doing everything to defeat the russians on the battlefield. the whole notion of figuring out how to get the migs into their hands. this is a battle of freedom and autocracy and putin can t have power in moscow. there s a mismatch between what the president is saying and feeling, which is reasonable, and what we re actually doing and what our policy is. i have to agree. that s been something that s been a head scratcher for people
protracted war against ukraine. do you have any idea what russia s red lines are? i think it s harder and harder to tell what putin s red lines are and what his calculus looks like. the challenge we have is we have to assess all of our assumptions about what russia will and won t do in light of what putin has been willing to do here in ukraine. i think the challenges, we want to avoid any escalation that gets close to any sort of nuclear confrontation. there has been talks certainly in russian circles, russian doctrine around the tactical nuclear weapons. this isn t all out nuclear war. obviously who wouldn t want to see that? we wouldn t want to get anywhere near there, but the reality is putin has defined the rungs of escalation. i think we ve allowed ourselves to fall into the trap of assuming anything that s provocative is immediately escalatory to the nuclear stage. i think what the russians are
u.s. has been working with the private sector. as you heard from senator warner and certainly president biden last week, further warnings to the private sector to be ready. i think it s not a matter of if, it is a matter of when. that is a sobering thought for sure. yesterday before has been marked in warsaw, president biden called putin a butcher. he said putin cannot remain in power. from a national security perspective, might that raise potential cyber attack concerns? i think it adds to the complexity of the conflict with russia, there s no question about it. certainly feeds the narrative and the sense that president putin has that this is more than just a matter of the attacks in ukraine, the war in ukraine that he has leveled, but it s more about the challenge from the west. frankly, i think the problem with the way the president has expressed this is it feeds right into putin s narrative that this