him at all? look, i think we have to understand this is a leader who has been acting as a war criminal throughout his reign. he rose to power by helping to orchestrate the bombing of two apartment buildings in moscow, killing hundreds of his own citizens as a prelude to the chechen war, the second chechen war where he leveled grozny. this has been consistent. we have to understand that vladimir putin s rise is really the story of a kgb takeover of russia s failed democratic transition. and that throughout his reign we have seen him inflict this on his own people, and that s a story of vladimir putin beginning first at home, from a assassinating political opponents such as boris nemtsov, and repressing free media, assassinating political the
increased numbers of civilian casualties. tony? i had a couple of quick questions. what are you doing right now to fulfill the president s $800 million order? are you looking at army and marine corps inventory for stingers, javelins and the switchblades and body armor or are you buying it? clarify that. then i have a follow on. we re working very hard right now in both the policy lanes as well as the operational lanes to fill out that $800 million package that the president just signed a few days ago. we started working on it immediately. we re doing that now. i can t speak to any specific deliveries. as you well know, likely deliveries of this material will happen over a period of time and we ll try to expedite that as
of it, as little get dragged all of this way, it uses she re-goals quickly. john, take us back a month, six months, a year ago. obviously, putin started the war, it is not rational. is there anything that would have served nato s interests, and ukraine s interest, that we could have done to prevent this? there is a lot of things. you can go back a lot further than just a year. essentially, vladimir putin has been at war with the west since 2008. he announced that. he s been involved in this game of subversion, sabotage, deception, and in disinformation against us. he s trying to influence elections, support violent groups among europe, all of these things. he has been at war in georgia ukraine, moldova, and other places. frankly, during that time, we did not do enough to prepare. it was not enough to support russian oil, to support allies like ukraine, so that we could be prepared to deal with russia. and, we never pushback defectively against lottery putin. we saw a pattern that c
rachel: if it s minor or not. that has to burn him. meanwhile our own jacqui heinrich asked joe biden if he thought putin was a war criminal. here s what happened. mr. president, after everything we have seen, are you ready to call putin a war criminal? no. did you ask me whether i would call. putin a war criminal? oh, i think he is a war criminal. steve: apparently he didn t hear it the first time or changed his mind. whatever. he came back and finally, those are as tough of words as he is has used there is a standard about who is a war criminal and jen psaki referred to the state department is trying to figure out whether or not he really is a war criminal. she said that the president speaking from the heart. he has seen the images looking at right there yeah that guy is a war criminal. brian: inthink probably
world war. a lot of other countries that didn t want them to have weapons. that, too. but germany has announced the massive increase of the defense budgetns this year alone. and germany has contributed massively to the nato troops that have gone to support the eastern flank of nato given putin s aggression. this, however, is not the beginning of our realization as european that s we need to do much more as defense. we ve been trying for years and we re investing much more together to create abilities. a few years back when we said we would do this, there were some voices in the states as well that that why do you want to do that? you already have nato. the answer is, i don t have a french army and then a french nato army or a grek army and then a greek nato army. it is one army. if that army becomes stronger, more efficient and more lethal, that means that nato is stronger and more efficientto and it can prevent people like putin because it will be perceived as