analyst. rick, it s great seeing you this morning. secretary of state antony blinken says he doesn t expect any breakthroughs from the talks this week. what is the biden administration looking for from these discussions? well, jose, there s this kind of classic shadow boxing before these negotiations. obviously, we ve negotiated with the russians before. we always lower expectations. that s what tony blinken did, and they always raise expectations. the russian deputy foreign minister said, you know, unless x and y happens, we re going to withdraw. so that s the usual kind of carrying that happens beforehand. i think, in truth, a lot of these things are negotiable. and that even though we say, you know, over and over, nothing about you without you about the europeans, but putin is concerned about his nato and nato expansion and military exercises on russia s borders. these are historical things that
punches and preening at her form. she has never been in the ring to fight anyone. in other words, she has never been pressed. just the slight bit of a cross-examination, just craig melvin asking one more follow-up and the shadow boxing falls apart. that s on us. it s not on brian, steve, ainsley, you know, rich chilly, will and pete particularly, it s on the media at large for letting somebody go through with absolutely no vetting. she just simply shadow boxed her way through, made people faces meme faces shefolds at the slig. brian: we are in the middle of a pandemic country has not seen in two and a half life times. can t get out of it. everything living with the virus. that would have been her answer, pivoting because of this new variant that has limited effect with the vaccine and with the booster. we are starting to realize with the survival rate so high. and that s great news, with the diminish six or seven separate states. we believe the worst is over and
it s not going to be a surprise. that s why i do think some of what we re seeing with the plussing up of weapons as kelly talked about is this kind of shadow boxing that both sides are doing. yes, america wants to show that we re on the side of our allies and on the side of nato, and, in fact, ukraine is not in nato, but a lot of this is i hope a prelude to a stand down to off ramps. there s lots of stuff that the u.s. and russia can negotiate about, including weapons and including intermediate range nuclear weapons, including the number of nato forces stationed in the easternmost countries, so, again, i m trying to be optimistic here that this plan that they can negotiate and that both sides are trying to stake out their positions before that negotiation. defense secretary austin has placed roughly 8,500 troops on,