these as a pretext for invasion. you should note that the official reporters i did not for the alleged a troop buildup. what is a incredibly overall desperate to make sense of. joining us now on this quest to make sense of what is happening is ben rhodes, former secretary adviser to obama. he was in that post when ukraine invaded russia in 2014. ben, it s always good to see you in catatonic this, my friend. thanks, alex. so, let s first talk about this latest assertion from the white house that contrary to what the russians are saying, we re actually seeing a buildup of troops on the border. do you we trust the u.s. government more than the russian government? this is just international gaslighting? here s what i think is happening, alex. russia tries to do what they have [inaudible] it s created
that is a little dramatic. secretary blinken made, basically, last-minute decision to attend a united nations security council session, which the russians had called. so, they wound up unwittingly given blinken a platform. the russians wanted to talk about the long running conflict with in ukraine, which is separate from this threat of russian invasion that could come from outside of ukraine. since 2004, the russians have been fomenting a separatist you rebellion in ukraine. russians wanted to talk about that. they re looking for leverage in ongoing negotiations to resolve that. some people think this troop buildup is actually all a power play to get the russians more leverage in those talks. but secretary blinken, basically, crash that little party and said, we need to be talking about the bigger issue here. this russian intimidation of ukraine, with a massive military buildup. it is part of what has been an interesting, you know, public offensive by the biden administration, to take
right now? well, troop buildup continues. there is no what we re not seeing is a retreat. what we have indicated is that there will be sanctions, et cetera. but we haven t seen in a response to that and in fact those troops remain in place and they re maneuvering, they re moving around, which would put them into more advantageous positions that would allow them to be within effective range of their capabilities. they could begin operations, excuse me, from where they are right now without crossing the border. what is clear is that the first movement is from russia here, into this area right here. these are the breakaway provinces, this area here is the area claimed by the russian-backed separatists. this area here is what they actually control. this is where we think the russian troops may already be as of right now. they are. they are. the donetsk region and luhansk regions. there are russian forces there, and they have been there for eight years.
nuclear weapons? maybe they shouldn t be aligned against us. that s just the simplest kind of math. maybe we shouldn t do anything that pushes out enemies into a bloc because that threatens us. but they don t know that s happening or maybe they are in favor of it. god knows what the biden administration is thinking. according to the new york times, the united states met with china over three months to present intelligence showing russia s troop buildup near ukraine and to urge beijing to help avert war. chinese officials rebuffed the united states and then shared that information with moscow. yeah. so we went to china for help to prevent putin from invading ukraine at the very moment that russia and china were forming a very public alliance against us. did that really happen? apparently it really did happen. how long can this go on?
light floods if you like could this have been president putin take things to the brink to get the west to me. the time has not changed in fact the military presence in nature has gone up and it feels like he has gone on the brink in terms of a larger military, large scale military operation so, as i say, we have had reports of troop movements to the eastern city of kharkiv, to the eastern city of kharkiv, to the south in edessa, on the coast of the black sea, to the east in kramatorsk an in the belgorod province south west of russia. quoting official saying the invasion has begun suggest something larger scale has begun and this has been very much part of the taper of not just ten months of troop