ukraine, this is important. overnight russian state media is reporting that russians living in ukraine at the russian embassy are also told to evacuate their embassy, and that s very telling. edward: that s a chilling sign. david spunt at the white house, wow. so americans in ukraine, get out now, as you heard david say. it s past time to get out. that s warning from officials in the u.s. they say russia s military buildup poses an immediate threat of invasion, so retired lieutenant colonel bob mcginnis joins me now. about two hours ago a secretary of state antony blinken spoke with the foreign russian minister, love lavrov. lavrov. this was the readout. the secretary made clear that a diplomatic path of resolving the crisis remained open, but it would require moscow to deescalate and engage in good faith discussions. you know, is this sort of like where the united kingdom, where not a lot of police officers carry guns and say stop or stop again? doesn t sound like a lot of
department official who said of americans needing to leave ukraine, it s not just time to leave ukraine, it is past time for private citizens to leave ukraine. the president, who is at camp david this weekend meeting with his national security team, will speak with his counterpart, russian president vladimir putin, we are told, sometime in the 11 a.m. hour today. we are hoping to get some details soon after that call. overnight, state department and other diplomatic staff were told to leave at this building, this is the u.s. embassy building in kyiv, ukraine. it shows that the united states is not only preparing for a conflict, but one that is expected to potentially make its way to the ukrainian capital. yesterday, edward, at the white house the president met with counterparts from around the world from canada to germany, to great britain to talk strategy about ukraine and what s looking more like a definitive russian invasion. president biden and putin met face to face in switzerland
and russian president vladimir putin, will speak very soon. so inside ukraine we re hearing military officials is have never been more nervous, but officially the government s saying it s business as usual. listen to this from the ukrainian president today. listen. we have different information and now the best friend for in our country. and all this information details only for [inaudible] doesn t help us. edward: so people are going about their normal lives, this close to an a invasion, what do you think about thatsome. well, when they see russians and americans leaving kyiv, the locals will take note. and they ll begin preparations. so the idea with of panic, of course they ve been seeing panic through psychological operations and hybrid operations for the last few months. this is nothing new. and i suspect the ukrainian
af after vladimir putin and also kremlin officials, really kind of some of their personal finances and, you know, mega-sanctions we re talking about. a bill here with teeth. the biggest holdup here seems to be the nord stream 2 pipeline, and if they were to address that, that might undercut the european if allies. you know, this sends natural gas to germany. that s a problem. and there was a meeting here with olaf schultz here in the past few days, and it seems senators are very concerned about cutting off their allies in europe who get the natural gas from this pipeline. you know, even during the cold war west germany got natural gas from the soviet union, so kind of what s the difference here? you know, this is the problem in how they balance that. so, in short, the sanctions bill is stalled out. chuck schumer, the senate majority leader, indicated that he wanted to have a bill done before an invasion to make a deterrence, but that doesn t seem to be the case.
do not put american s in harm s way or americans in harm s way or else, so what signals does that send to president putin? well, i think from the very beginning last summer, as your reporter indicated, the president has not, you know, president biden has really not put pressure enough on putin. the idea of sanctions would be overcome with the help of president xi in china, so i really don t see that the u.s. nor the sum of western european nations have the upper hand, and that s why i think macron and schultz are going to do whatever they can to mitigate the tensions. but the reality is that i think mr. putin can kind of dictate the terms of what s going to to happen whether it s going to be a full scale invasion that could be very bloody and costly to him or a false flag operation or something in between. edward: so i want to tell you that we can now report that biden and putin, president biden