the time line of the russian military objectives in this new phase of the war? sflit not exactly clear, wolf. we do already see the russians begin to refit, resupply and try to reenforce some of the units in the donbas. we see them flowing in. reespecially and command and control and enabling russia into the northern area of the donbas. so it s already you can see them already sort of trying to shape the environment. it s unclear exactly when full-on offensive operations might occur. i would remind your viewers the donbas has been in a hot war for eight years. the ukrainians and russians have been fighting over it quite a long time. how long it will last, that remains to be seen as well, what are the ultimate goals? again, we don t know perfectly. it could be mr. putin wants to secure the donbas as a negotiating chip at the table. it could be he might declare that s the end all-be all of his
a negotiating chip and what are horrific thing to do to someone. harris: any way that backfires on putin? well, this kind of tactic of hostage diplomacy is a longstanding tactic of authoritarian regimes. the iranians have habitually done it. the taliban are doing it. they still have an american that we completely left behind in the withdrawal. maduro regime has american oil workers on house arrest. again we can t let putin dictate the terms. but i do not see us getting back into any kind of meaningful relationship until those americans are freed. that needs to be a pre-condition when we move beyond all of this if putin ever wants any of these sanctions lifted or any type of normalcy, we have to deal with that up front, not on the back end. harris: the reports about the health of the two men who
global world we can find a way to have a relationship with russia that involves peace and prosperity. neil: very quickly, secretary. these peace negotiations tomorrow. the russias want to keep the land that they locked down in the eastern part of the country, parts of the south and that that might be a negotiating chip. by that, they would want to keep that to secure an agreement and walk away. do you think ukraine would accept that? i doubt it. i think president zelensky is not particularly interested in rewarding the russians for the invasion that they made on ukraine. allowing them to have territory that they conquered by military force. but having said that, i think that there s a combination of
become a negotiating chip. they don t want it to become a political football every few years where we get into a cycle like this or we see a situation like 2011 where the obama administration gave some on domestic spending so they could get a debt ceiling through. so the white house is raising the alarm bells about this. they are not negotiating. but one thing they really are doing is trying to rachet up the pressure on republicans and let them know, if you stand in the way of the vote, if you don t let this through, we will come after you on a near daily basis from the white house, from the oval office, with ceos, like we saw today, with top officials out there on tv, and they have a plan to really rachet that up as these negotiations go from the weeks into days into hours stage of things. tony, what was your level of expectation that this 11th hour office was going to come through from senator mcconnell? what s his move here? right, i mean, the issue here
answer this hostage diplomacy situation and resolve it as quickly as possible. so, i would ask president biden to productively discuss and resolve this issue with his russian counterparts. reporter: yeah, i think that paul whelan believes he s very much a sort of negotiating chip for the russians to return back some russian prisoners that are in american jails. the problem has always been that the russians in american jails are really high-level criminals. one of them is a convicted cocaine smuggler, conspiracy to smuggle cocaine into the u.s. the other within is the world s most notorious arms traffickers. u.s. officials i ve spoken to say there s no correlation. paul woulhelan and trevor reed,e other u.s. citizen in a russian jail, are in a different category than the serious criminals russians want exchanged. not a one for one.