Ukraine’s president has vowed to keep pushing Russian forces out of his country after they withdrew from Kherson, leaving behind devastation, hunger and booby traps in the southern Ukrainian city
after their exercises have ended, also the signals from the kremlin earlier today as well that the focus for vladimir putin and i m paraphrasing him here was going to be on negotiations, even though troop withdrawals have not been verified, and the tension in ukraine tonight, the concern that there may be a sort of imminent attack. the threat is still there, but i think some of those tensions have been eased, erin. math thew chance, and i wanto go out front to retired general james spidermarks, head of geopolitical strategy. and evelyn farkas, former deputy assistant for russia, ukraine, and yeurasia in the obama administration. evelyn, let me start with you tonight. what do you make of the timing of the cyber attacks that we saw here tonight? you know, as they say, some exercises over, we re pulling troops out, even though that
that putin, broke overnight, that putin said he would withdraw some troops. it s clear the intelligence doesn t support that yet. what s going on? i can t tell you, nicolle, what s going on. i do not know what s going on. i would just say reading some tea leaves, here s a couple of things i would note. one, we ve heard about troop withdrawals before. we ve been through that dance. i m not prepared to say that is happening now. lots of other indicator they re building up. more importantly is what you re seeing in the message about negotiations. we saw putin sitting with lavrov. that was all staged on purpose for lavrov to say i think negotiations are working and his boss said, good. that s an indication they re
pre-emptive sanctions or not. republican colleagues think they should be doing it now. the biden administration decided to keep the powder dry but if it happens they will cut off nord stream 2. i think the german partners made it clear now that they will do that, as well. at this moment it s just the diplomat offramp. i m impressed with the biden proposals and i m impressed from what i hear that they re willing to go further than the obama administration would have gone to talk about transparency, troop withdrawals and limits on the weapons systems in europe. president biden the last time addressing the american people talked about that not putting rockets in ukraine to attack moscow. we will do that on a reciprocal