more importantly, the putin friendly opponent from the neo-fascist party marine le pen not winning the election and that has huge implications in effect for the ukraine war and pull france out of nato. with her losing, that is no longer on the table. the european company of slovenia had a national election yesterday in which their own far right leader, their prime minister, lost his seat in parliament. that is also good news for the prospect of europe being united and on ukraine s side in the war right now. the u.s. secretary of state and u.s. defense secretary were in kyiv this weekend and met with ukrainian president volodymyr zelenskyy and in addition to announcing further military aid for ukraine, blinken and austin said the administration plans to send diplomats mack to ukraine in the coming days and open up the embassy in kyiv in the next weeks and a new nomination for
the u.s.ry defense secretary of course these past couple of days were in ukraine, as russia starts to spread its war into yet another country, defense secretary lloyd austin said it must now be the goal of ukraine s allies including the united states to weaken the russian military so they can t do stuff likery this anymore, a that would be an almost unthinkable thing for a u.s. defense secretary to have said in public before circumstances like this, but in circumstances like this, it almost seems inevitable. so tonight we will have more on that ahead including the news that the u.s. is reopening its embassy in the ukraine capital, we evacuated our diplomats at the start of the war but they re going back to kyiv. all interesting stuff. all important. here at home today, the dystopian capitalist novel we all liveta in got a new chapter. the kind of chapter that signals that maybe we re getting toward the end of this book, that certainly this plot must be
essentially signaled that they would likeed to take that part moldova for russia. and that pre-dated the ukraine invasion that putin started in february. but now, russia appears to be startingar to start that projec or at least trying to create the pretext for them going into moldova and trying to take at least part ofmo that country as well. so under vladimir putin, we ve got russia invading and taking over one neighboring country, ukraine, and now, just in case itju wasn t clear enough what kd of leader putin is, and what kind of war this is, whether he has limited aims, he really does appear to behe preparing to kee moving west, to keep attacking more country, starting with moldova, even before he s achieved his purported aims in ukraine. so that is very worrying and it would seem to create a sort of new international imperative about how we think about thatat conflict and how we think about vladimir putin. the u.s. secretary of state and
the u.s. to appoint a new u.s. ambassador to ukraine. amid all of this outreach to ukraine, tomorrow, the secretary general of the united nations is going to moscow, to meet in person with vladimir putin directly, he s going to be pushing for a cease-fire of some kind, in the ukraine war. and then also tomorrow, 36 years to the day, after the chernobyl soviet nuclear disaster, tomorrow the international atomic energy agency which is the u.n. s agency, sending a delegation to chernobyl in ukraine to see how much damage russian troops did there when they took over and looted the site, headed by the iaea, the head of the agency will be running the trip. and as russia is trying to open another front in another country as they are pressing on, beyond ukraine now, into moldova,
today feels like a week at least.to the news came from from all directions. in one development, that i m not sure is totally sunk in yet here, russia seems to be making moves to extend its war into a third country now. beyond the borders of ukraine. and this i think is as significant as it sounds. which is whygn i m sort of surprised it s not making a bigger splash in terms of how we think about this conflict here inwe the united states. on the southwest border of ukrainewe is a very small count called moldova. in terms of its overall size, i would say for comparison sake, the closest u.s. state by size would be roughly maryland. moldova isou a little bit bigge than maryland. the closest state in size. on the very eastern side of that small ercountry, of course the part thatse borders ukraine, we just marked it there, russia has previously stoked conflict in ta little strip of moldova. russia in years past has