in russian and soviet history. josef stalin wrote an essay, dizziness when the soviet union was running riot throughout the country and kbd people arresting people, torturing them, murdering them, interrogating them. they have to come out and say, sorry, it s the guys, my underlings got carried away. the kremlin doesn t take the blame, certainly. this comes against the backdrop of those sham referendums russia is holding in the occupied areas of ukraine. those are happening this week. give us a quick assess noent assessment. that is not going to change much in the war. this is illegal. the referendum have no bearing under international law. they re not going to respect them. we found so much territory in ukraine. now we take the territory we
conflict. but on both on the economic front and there is stuff the military is doing to protect against a refugee crisis and the stuff that lloyd austin announced. talk about the way the military has a role to play here even though it s not a role not so far at least and hopefully never a role that involves direct conflict or combat. sure, john. look, whim it s not a large scale conflict, certainly we have seen it invasion by russia of ukraine. and the united states military has a role not to engage in direct action with russia. the president was very clear that our president is for defense. the defense of nato and our nato allies. that s why i fully support secretary austin and the white house s decision to move european troops forward into poland and the baltic states to demonstrate our resolve and commit noent nato. and to send a strong message to
normally they speak right away. what does that mean to you? well, i think it means that the phones aren t being answered because i think the russian officials on the other side are afraid to talk to the americans. i think they probably are they re not in good graces with putin right now, and so they re probably keeping their head down, and so their phone rings, and it s their counterpart, the united states, from the other end. i have a feeling they don t know quite what to say because putin is calling the shots. i think they d rather keep their head down and noent gauge with the americans and have it get out in the press what they might discuss. i think they re just dodging a bullet here. and i want to get your reaction to this. kaitlan, you ve been doing a lot of reporting, potentially it would never happen with the russians using chemical weapons
initially just liaising between the foreign prisoners and people dealing with their negotiation process. with their families to try to extract a ransom? yeah. yes. reporter: koti admits to helping via remote from syria to getting a firearm for an isis fighter for his failed assassination plot in 2016. i was the acquisition of the firearm. as far as the details of any plot and what he then went on to do, i had no involvement in that. reporter: the grins they had when i met them a year ago in person were long gone. i miss fish and chips. reporter: now isis so-called caliphate has been defeated. there too are thousands of isis prisoners held in northern syria who noent know that don t know what will happen to them.
ask for more money. why aren t they working together with the superintendent to go to our legislature. i think that is critical, and the other point i wanted to make is that i think we need to stop focusing so much on parents leaving the system to go to charter or private. i think we need to look at why are they leaving. if they are happy and learning, they re going to stay in ualsd. just a noent, we invited the new governor of california on to talk about this but we unfortunately were not able to schedule something with his office. we invited anyone from the governor s office to come talk about state level funding, we invite them on any time they re happy to come talk about it. one other question for you,