nato. russia is now demanding that the united states and nato sign treaties to draw forces to central eastern europe and to prevent ukraine from ever joining nato. they want a debate on nato rather focus on the matter at hand which is their aggression towards ukraine. we won t be averted from that issue. reporter: nato and the u.s. in alignment many jens stoltenberg saying they have to be prepared for diplomatic favor and if that s the case, very tough sanctions on russia would follow but how to solve this diplomatically really isn t clear, threading that needle finding something that president putin can take away from the talks that he can feel is a success having set such a high bar and something that until going to divide the nato allies that s a tough challenge. nic robertson, cnn, moscow. coming up, rampant covid