failed. is there any discernable pathway out of the crisis and what is the off ramp? to the president of romania i m curious if you think there are any specific economic sanctions you would like to see the u.s. pursue that they have not done so already. thank you. in terms of your question about offramps, from the beginning the united states has been attempting to engage in diplomacy actively. and from everything that we know and have witnessed, putin shows no sign of engaging in serious diplomacy. as many of you know, i gave a speech in munich three weeks ago before the reinvasion of ukraine started and i said then what we have maintained all along, we are witnessing a playbook. the russian playbook.
the new york times and outline how d the united states officials had done an incredibly impressive job of laying out how this war was going to begin. the question, of course, the unanswerable question of how it will end. do you see any diplomatic offramps for putin? i think one of the problems is when people hear the word offramp, they start to associate that with something like a reward for atrocious behavior, but that s not the case. an offramp is just laying out terms for what we would do to remove the punishment, which has been so intense if russia reverses course. so i think that element is very important to consider. and right now the situation is very hard to predict. down the line, it might be necessary to make a grim bargain with moscow. and thinking about the kinds of assurances that western governments would be able to and willing to give is an important part of that story that we
kremlin and moscow that they haven t achieved their basic objectives, that they re now in week fourth quarter, and it looks like it s going to be a very hard slog for the russian military. and we saw in mariupol the russian military reverts to the tactics used in syria where it bombed hospitals and indiscriminately targeted civilian areas. and i fear they could even go back to the tick ticks they used in grozny in the second chechnya war where they basically levelled the city. it s the kind of thing i think reflects frustration in moscow, and it s now leading the russians to adopt more brutal tactics, which i think will end up killing a lot of people, but probably are not going to undermine the will of the ukrainians to resist. ambassador, we keep coming back to this question, this conversation about offramps, right? at what point putin feels as though he needs to sit down and figure out a diplomatic solution to this crisis where there is a lot of confusion, a lack of
putin is out by now, especially because he s thrown his entire economy into turmoil. he s coste moeshl places. and he got out of the war without overlooking any of his objectives. how that s going to miraculously happen. it seems to me not only are they still engaged, but there are intermedias. with putin, i ve seen it important, but i ve seen it too many times before where people are looking for putin to take offramps he s not interested in, and he s playing just a very dirnt game. susan glasser, thank you etch. with all the talk now willy.
big story that broke overnight yesterday which is the fact that the president was able to secure the release of an american hostage who had been in iran for some three years, a yacht student. the president a grad student. the president didn t just hail that, he opened the door potentially to a bigger deal with iran. watch. we re very happy to have our hostage back, the princeton university community is very thrilled. actually, i think it was a great thing for iran, i think it was great to show that we can do something. it might have been a precursor as to what could be done. ed: the president famously pulled out of the obama nuclear deal saying it was too weak. do you think what are the prospects for a stronger nuclear deal with iran? i d be very cautious about making any determination about that. but what i think that s important here is that the president once again is making clear to the iranians that the offramps here are negotiations. remember, the president decided to sta