at what putin does and not just what he is saying. they reference that had speech he gave today, the angry diatribe against ukraine saying they have never been a true nation in and of themselves. they believe that that was a speech to the russian people to justify a warnings and, of course, they have been warming about the imminent attack here with jake sullivan, the national security adviser saying this morning they could they believe it would be happening in hours or days and, of course, that s a big question here of whether or not they would use this as a definition of an invasion. it doesn t appear that they are ready to take that step, though they say they will be watching closely to see what it is that putin does over the next several hours and overnight, wolf. we shall see. kaitlan, i want you to say with us and jill dougherty, our pentagon correspondent and orrin lieberman. it s expected russian forces could move into the donbas region as soon as tomorrow
russian force across the ukranian border an invasion. it s clearly an invasion, right? well, that would be my view, but i think the white house, the administration has done very well through this and has played not the greatest hand pretty astutely. when any russian troops march into any part of ukraine under any pretense regardless of what it s called that. to me walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, it s an invasion. that s what most people would say. as someone who led the nation s key intelligence agencies. you ve studied putin for a long time. what do you see is his calculation here? well, you know, i i took note of what the finnish prime minister said about the change in putin. he has a lot of interactions, a
mutual assistance, what they are talking about is the president ordering the armed forces of russia to ensure peacekeeping functions, so they could very well open the door to piece keepers in quote, going in, of course, the intent to protect the people there. obviously the russians wouldn t say it s an invasion, but it would be a peacekeeping protected function. that s what they would say. clarissa, how are ukranian civilians bracing for what s likely to come? well, i think there s been a super shift here. make no mistake. for days we ve been talking about relatively calm people, are but tonight through conversations that i ve had on social media and talking to people, it s clear and there s a real sense of palpable fear, that this could potentially constitute the beginning of an invasion, and i would say the
sanctions on the two independent territories, nothing on russia or putin directly yet. this is not triggering the unleashing of the full sanctions package that the white house has been talking about for some time now saying that that s what would happen and that that s what they would do in coordination with allies if the full-scale invasion would occur and a senior official said because russia has had forces in in area since 2014 they don t consider this to be a new step. of course, you are seeing the changes that have been made today with the steps that putin took which the white house has described previously as would be in violation of these international agreements. now they say there is more to come. they expect more sanctions activity to happen tomorrow. officials have not detailed, wolf, what exactly that would look like or what the steps would be. that, of course, is something will be waiting to see what exactly it is and what clarissa was saying about these troops an these tr
if you regard that moving into these areas as an invasion, what should the u.s. do? there are three immediate things we should do. we should impose some of the most consequential sanctions ever contemplated by an alliance like ours that will cripple the russian economy in virtually every critical sector, making it almost impossible for russia to function through trade, investment and imports. secondly, we need to shore up our nato borders to make it very clear to putin that we are prepared to protect nato members from any incursion on the part of russia, and, thirdly, we need to help the ukranians defend themselves, and that means providing military equipment, training and and the like to help them defend their own