been trying in the past. yeah, but what are the chances, given what you know about president putin and having worked in moscow, you know the mentality here, what are the chances that putin is going to say, i m not invading and i m going to prove this american president and the nato leadership is wrong, by not invading? i mean, that s the best hope right now, that the americans and western allies have right now, that putin wouldn t want to seem like he was simply proving biden right. but that may not be enough. that s the problem, it s not really up to the americans or the west, it s not up to ukraine, right now it s entirely up to one man, vladimir putin. i ve been thinking about this in the last few days, why would he want to do this? you would think this wasn t a good thing for the russians, putting aside effect western sanctions might have, having a war against 40 million people who aren t going to accept you with open arms has not been a good thing for other countries that have
irrational because being cut off from the financial system, he may be able to survive that but not everyone in his country can. the body bags aren t coming to his door but the russian people s door. is that irrational behavior? the things that can be done and- devastating, he doesn t seem to care. he doesn t care. they re not going to hurt him and this is not about where the stock market and russia is go to be in a week or a month. putin is playing a long game. the word is very elastic term, irrational or not but an idelog. he has an ideology and followers not just in the quite but throughout most of europe. there are pockets of people that think like him and line up with him along the ideological way but there will come a moment of truth very soon. there is good and evil in the world. there is an autocratic putin
that he believed that putin wouldn t stop necessarily at ukraine, that his goal was really reexecconstituteing the entire soviet union and lot of chilling thoughts and chilling words coming out outof washington tonight. thanks so much, kevin liptak in washington. let s cross to gym bitterman in paris with the latest international reaction. jim? kim, in fact, the european union met until the we hours this morning. and now, the news conference afterward to talk about the kind of things they are proposing to do, the kind of sanctions they are proposing to take. ursula von der leyen the european commission president said that russia will, quote we will hold the kremlin accountable and then, it outlined some of the sanctions they are talking about. although, many were saying this morning that the sanctions did not go far enough. president macron at that news conference last night revealed that, in fact, he had put in a phone call to president putin of moscow, and as the attack was
could that could gain access to kyiv. secretary of state antony blinken saying publicly today that the u.s. believes that putin s intention is to encircle the city. certainly, intelligence and defense officials at this point believe pretty firmly that putin s intention is to try to topple the zelenskyy government in kyiv and we understand, from previous reporting, presumably, replace it with some kind of pro-russia, russia-friendly proxy proxy government. so really, tonight, all eyes on kyiv and on the ukrainian forces fighting to defend the the capital and the country at large. intelligence and defense offi officials have been frank from the beginning, though, they are outgunned, outmanned, and the expect is they will not ultimate hi be able to repel the invasion but hopefully extract some cost from russia in doing so. i think one of the big unanswered questions at this point is what happens if russia is successful if it is able to topple kyiv, if it is able to install some kind
and deter him from taking further action. tonight, there was a sense that this was perhaps just the first step, that this was could have been worse, that this wasn t a declaration of war, that there wasn t an all-out assault from all sides on this country, that it was a recognition by russia of the sovereignty of an enclave already controlled by russia, but a deep concern that this is really just the first bite and that there will be more, and that in the coming days, perhaps even tomorrow or tonight, that there could be some sort of invented provocation and that it would allow putin to continue advancing not just into the separatist areas but beyond. because ukrainians will say, and have told me time and time again, that this entire campaign by putin is based on lies. it is based on the fact, first, that putin claims that there is