i would go farther. if you think about the content of u.s./russian relations today with the possible exception of ukraine, what about ukraine, we didn t annex territory there and support separatists. that is what russia did. the meddling in the election. did we meddle in their elections? no, that was created by putin. who was the leader that backed assad? that was putin. it s his agenda, he created that agenda. so for us to just say well, let s move forward because, why? we want to cooperate on what? i think that is not smart diplomacy. malcolm, we use intelligence-gathering to get proof and evidence. weirdly, vladimir putin through lavrov has said if you think we meddled in the election, provide us with the proof. that is not how the intelligence-gathering works. this is brilliant. people have said that putin was a mid-level human intelligence
percentage of gdp does it account for. i think the evidence is clear, putin wants the sanctions to be lifted, therefore it must be costly. what i think was a real disappointment for me about this conversation and especially the read out by secretary tillerson he just kept saying well, we all have to forget about the past and move forward, this may be a disagreement that we have to agree to disagree. yeah, and we may disagree about policies between countries including the united states and russia, most certainly that happened when i was in the government. we can t agree to disagree about the facts. and there are facts here, they violated our sovereignty, and say well, we can t come to an agreement, so we just have to move on. i would go farther, if you think about the content of u.s./russian relations today with the possible exception of ukraine, what about ukraine, we