one year later. almost exactly a year ago missile attacks against the capital of ukraine, kyiv. to most this was a surprise attack and invasion. the ukrainians didn t see it coming, nor did the europeans. the one consistent voice cautioning that an invasion was likely, the u.s. intelligence community. another surprise for the world, the intense resolve about entertainer turned president volodymyr zelenskyy, unlike others in his position he didn t flee but only left the country a handful of times to plea for guns and ammunition. and for the last year he s faced off from across the border with vladimir putin who has ruled russia for more than two de decades. the key player who is not a participant in the war, the united states of america. it is the country that has organized the sanctions against russia, it is the country that has been the single biggest provider of military and nonmilitary assistance and tonight on this special program, you ll hear from two top officials on am
first of all, the russian government has put an enormous amount of effort into trying to prop up the economy and they are spending down their sovereign wealth fund, basically the money they ve got in their government bank in order to prop up the economy and to keep those numbers looking good on paper. but underneath that, there are signs of fundamental structural rot in the russian economy. their ability to access high technology which mostly comes from the west, their ability to access the brains of some of the smartest people in russia is becoming constrained by the fact that those people are flowing in droves in hundreds of thousands. their ability to keep replenishing their war machine with the components they need to build the missiles and bombs that they re raining down on ukraine has been hampered badly by these sanctions. and the thing about the sanctions, fareed s. that they have a compounding effect. they get worse over time. .by month. they hollow out the russian industrial
in their tracks so they couldn t roll over kyiv and anti-air systems like stinger missiles to shoot down the helicopters that were bringing in paratroopers to try to take over the city from the air. in the second phase of the war, ukraine really needed artillery in the east to stop the more traditional advances of the russian military. as we head into the spring, what ukraine really needs is armor. infantry fighting vehicles and, yes, tanks and we re providing those. the president was advised by his military abrams tanks, the american tank doesn t make sense for this fight. what they really needed were leopard tanks, german tanks that a bunch of countries in europe own but the germans said we won t provide our tanks unless you, the united states provide your tanks and president biden said, if me providing aobamas tanks even if it s not the most sensible military move will help unlock germany tanks to get to the front lines and also will
out there in his reasoning for going to war that do resonate with a lot of russian people. there are a lot of people here in this country who believe that the east of ukraine is essentially russian territory. historically russian territory, there s a lot of people who believe that territory was infringed upon by the united states, by nato and that somehow this conflict now is one between russia and the west and specifically between russia and the united states, so right now there s no public pressure on vladimir putin to end this war and it certainly doesn t seem as though he s inclined to do so any time soon, fareed. fred, what is life like day-to-day for russians? do they feel the war in any sense? reporter: that s an extremely important question. i m really glad you asked that, fareed, because i think a lot of people would be very surprised to see what life is like here in moscow. there s till a lot of western products on the shelves, card payments are possible, electronic payme
possible position to secure its sovereignty and territorial integrity. let s take a question from the audience. meet walter. he served in the u.s. army for 19 years, he has a question for administrator power. walter. thanks for the opportunity. what vital interest does the united states have in ukraine from a national security perspective? it seems avoiding nuclear war with russia is most important, however, the continued material support to ukraine raises the possibility that nuclear escalation might occur. our strategy seems to rely on the rationality of vladimir putin to not go nuclear. is this wise? thank you so much. well, you ve heard president biden himself speak often to the importance of avoiding exactly that scenario. he s been very attentive to the risk of escalation and the strategy that has been pursued, has been very measured, but what