Roughly half will be for military aid, the other half for humanitarian aid. it s not sure if that s going to be rolled into this larger omnibus funding bill or if it s going to be stand-alone but that s what we re looking ahead to as the week starts next week in washington. okay, ali vitali outside the white house, thank you so much for that report. let s go now to those breaking developments in just this past hour on the efforts to oust russia from s.w.i.f.t. the german ambassador to the u.s. now says germany is working on how to limit the collateral damage from banning russia from s.w.i.f.t. that is a european-based messaging network and that connects financial institutions around the world. president biden thus far refraining from banning russia earlier this week, saying the move does not yet have widespread european support. well, joining me now is natalie jaresko, ukraine s finance minister from 2014 to 2016. natalie, big welcome to you. glad to have you here and want to ask how
Looked into putin s eyes, he saw three letters, k, g, and b, and i think for the vast majority of putin s time in office, that s really how he s operated. he served in east germany, really when east germany fell and the soviet union really fell apart in 1991. that s when he was there. and i think he views that as almost a personal defeat. he grew up at a time in russia in the 50s, 60s, really at their really some of their strongest point, and i think that is he wants to restore russia really back to that, and he looks at ukraine right now as being occupied, almost, by a foreign country, and that foreign country being sort of the west s influence, if you will. well, here s what french president emmanuel macron said recently about putin, and it was reported in the wall street journal. that mr. macron noticed a change in mr. putin s demeanor when speaking to him on the phone over the course of the pandemic. he tended to talk in circles,
Impact that might be having. i ll just tell you one more story. i spoke to a official in the russian foreign ministry just yesterday, and she told me, i have friends and family in ukraine. so, just inside the government, remember, there will be officials who have loved ones and connections in ukraine. now, some of them will be russian-speaking in parts of ukraine that have been calling for independence, clearly, but many won t be. so, again, president putin, under a lot of pressure tonight. the picture you re painting there, it s like president putin is a general with his loyal lieutenants surrounded around them but there may be some fissures being created. thank you so much, keir. as russian forces are advancing more than 100,000 ukrainians have fled to poland and that is where we find nbc s kelly cobiella. welcome to you. what are you hearing from all these refugees coming across the
The europeans have sanctioned. all the members of the cabinet of ministers and then the largest piece that you can of oligarchs, so-called oligarchs, the wealthy elites that are supporting him. natalie, you were ukraine s finance minister when russia annexed crimea in 2014. most of the sanctions then were directed against the russian oligarchs, so how do the sanctions today differ, and is there one that you think has the greater impact and hopefully your answer would be today s? so, i think that the sanctions when they illegally annexed crimea were narrow and they were a handful, again, of individuals of the elite with, unfortunately, too many exceptions and carveouts, even within those sanctions. had those sanctions been stronger, we may not be where we are today. and they didn t work in the sense of deterring putin from what he s doing. again, what i think is most important today, aside from s.w.i.f.t., is the full sanctioning of the central bank of russia, the reserves of russia
Before, and that he told them on camera, while i have no choice but to do this, when the camera was switched off, apparently he told them, don t think that you won t do business with the sanctioned banks and businesses here in russia because you might be punished. if you try and do that, i will punish you, and that story gives you a picture that there is not an oligarch or a business leader here in russia who is not there simply because president putin wants them to be there. so you can t underestimate his control. he has people who are friends from kgb days, decades back, in multiple senior positions across russian business. that being said, clearly, the pressure is having an effect, and i do think that we shouldn t underestimate the pressure of the russian people seeing kyiv, an onslaught on kyiv and the connections that there are here in russia with ukraine and what