this is what vladimir putin has done has united the world in this battle good versus evil. it really is remark thashl one man, vladimir putin, has caused all of this misery. he also has made all of the postworld war ii institutions, international institutions, more relevant than they ve ever been. thank you so much for watching today. please keep in mind, as you re watching the coverage, you watch this unfolding tragedy that we, the united states, there are some things we can do and some things we can t. a no-fly zone. putting boots on the ground in ukraine. equals world war iii and a possible nuclear holocaust. that does its for thus morning. chris jansing picks up the coverage right now. i m chris jansing live at msnbc headquarters here in new york city. it is thursday, march 3rd, and as we speak, the violence again in ukraine escalating, and so are the moves against vladimir
opportunity to ask a question. tell us about it. what did the foreign minister have to say this morning? reporter: yeah, actually nbc news was the first western news organization to get a question to any russian official since this war started. sergey lavrov held a news conference and i asked him, what is the plan basically, what s the objective of this operation? is it to remove a democratically elected president, president zelenskyy, and what is your exit plan? if you say that you don t plan to occupy ukraine, how do you plan to install a pro-russian government and then remove russian soldiers? his answer was, frankly, what you would expect. he repeated many of the things that president putin says. we don t believe it is a democratically elected government, repeated the claims that russian speakers are not allowed to speak russian in schools and things, called that genocide. of course, that there are so
nation, and to protect our interests with regard to european stability. we should be doing a lot more, but there s a fear somehow we will end up in a war with russia. we won t. putin is deathly afraid of that. let me ask you. what would you have us do. what is more? what would you have joe biden do. i have had people tell me, oh, we should put troops, we should put u.s. troops into western ukraine. let s just be very clear here for everybody that is watching right now. that is an invitation to world war iii. not an invitation, actually it is a trigger for world war iii. if you are sitting there not you, but if somebody at home is sitting there and going, biden and the united states was weak because they did not introduce u.s. troops to ukraine, no sane, rational thinker in any administration would have done so. he s promised not to. with that off the board, what could you have suggested to joe biden to do that would have stopped vladimir putin from continuing on this messia
ukrainians do believe they have a country and are fighting for it comes back to him. then he has to think, as we had to think with iraq and afghanistan, how do i get out of this. as he breaks it, he will own it or he will own the consequences. so i think your point about putin being out of time and out of touch is one we should remember, even as we think of the brave people in these you see the pictures. i saw a picture on social media of a mother near kharkiv as a russian jet was storming past her house and dropping bombs, and her little child just screamed, wailed, and this mother grabbed the child and you thought, as we need to in war, that could be me, that could be me and my child, my grandchild, and this howling child was taken down to a basement while the
just in moscow, alex any navalny as he is about to be sentenced for 15 more years, the russian opposition leader, he uses that moment to speak out against this war, i think that means that millions more share those preferences, they just don t want to express them because they don t want to go to jail. but the other thing you said, joe, is very true, too. it is not a democracy. it is a dictatorship. so the translation of those preferences into any influence over vladimir putin is going to be measured over months and years, not days and weeks. ambassador, president biden rolls out some new sanctions yesterday as anticipated, and just as he does that vladimir putin continues his march now to the outskirts of kyiv. clearly the sanctions are not a deterrent. is there something else in terms of sanctions that can be done? and if not, what is the recourse for the world? what is the recourse for the west other than to issue condemnations, to roll out more sanctions and to watch putin contin