hello. i m ana cabrera in new york. thanks for joining us. much more news here in the newsroom, including what we ve been discussing. the major historic announcement at the white house today involving the supreme court. we re also tracking the u.s. economy, which just grew at its fastest rate since 1984. of course, there s still inflation and other problems for americans. we ll discuss with white house national economic counsel brian diets. the ball is in putin s court. russia has the written responses from the u.s. no concessions. troops remain at the ukrainian border and just this morning, the initial response from putin s spokesman, quote, there are few reasons for optimism. at stake, a crisis that president biden warns could lead to the largest invasion since world war ii. the top of the hour, president biden is due to hold a phone call with ukraine s president.
that they are sending a united signal about the cost to russia. and then, of course, there is the military side. the pentagon still working on what it would look like if those troops who have been put on high alert actually head to europe and when they would need to do that. and in terms of timing by russia on any potential action, the kremlin announced today that putin will travel to turkey to meet with president erdogan and turkey says that will be after putin returns from the beijing olympics. do these two putin obligations buy more time for diplomacy? yeah, this is an overture by president erdogan in turkey. he seems as a member of nato, he seems to be trying to cast himself here as a mediator between, you know, perhaps russia and the rest of nato, russia and the united states. i think the response from the kremlin was sort of diplomatic, polite to erdogan who has been making noises like this for the
sort of manage the optics of, if he s going to move forward diplomatically, do that when he hasn t got what was originally offered. and i don t think we ll have to wait too long. they indicated no answer today but in the next few days when they ve worked out a new position. president putin making a significant trip today to st. petersburg to lay a wreath at the site of the siege of lenen grad which is something that is seared into the collective memory of all russians, particularly the elder generation, like president putin s. sieged during the second world war. close to 900 days, close to 800,000 people died during those incredibly tough years. and, of course, at the time not long after, president putin grew up in the rubble of what was leningrad and has become st. petersburg. founding memories have come out of the ashes of the second world war and where we re at the the moment is really the point where
russians here to see if there are things where they think they can continue working together on. and the russians for their part have said they ll not respond today but they would respond in short order. so that s where the diplomats are right now in terms of that diplomatic path. but the other aspect of this and secretary blinken spoke to this yesterday, is that the biden administration continues to sharpen, to develop those costs that they will inflict on russia should they invade ukraine. so that is really what they are focused on now. getting making sure that they are in lockstep with allies in europe. making sure that they have china on board to inflict some of these costs. secretary blinken spoke with his chinese counterpart just today on this. and looking forward, the german leader is going to be visiting the white house at the beginning of february. that is another opportunity to make sure that the u.s. and germany, where there has been some daylight on this issue of nord str
vladimir putin. i suppose we don t know for sure if this is being done on purpose or whether it is just ineptitude. the consequences could be the same. i think the ukrainians are saying they have diesel generators which can do the work for 48 hours. they re running out of time. what does happen if you can no longer use the spent rods? i ll tell you, the reason i believe this is intentional is because it is not as if russia wasn t warned about this, it is not as if vladimir putin hasn t been signaling time and again that he wants to use nuclear energy or nuclear weapons as a tool in his arsenal in this illegal invasion of ukraine. and so if we don t get control of it, if the internationalscie don t get control of it, don t get it running again, then there is a risk of a meltdown and that cannot be something that is continually held as a trigger to the head of the ukrainian people or europe. i get your point here.