first with le letting other country control the world. you can t, those people are naive, they say peace through strong. i want peace not war. this is nice. here is the thing, you can t forget about strength part. that is pretty hard. we re friends of john ratcliffe, he understands, that i think that trump administration hooded understood that well, they understood divisive act when needed and how necessary strong rhetoric was, even just saying things like telling p putin we ll bomb moscow if you invade ukraine that is the strength part. now, our side our populist right or america firsters say they that is war mongering, supporting our allies is war mongering? that is the weakest form of
fact that, you know, this is, again, not in their best interests, and that obviously there would be some consequences. i d rather leave that in diplomatic conversations and not get ahead of where we are. the thing to remember is that they haven t made this decision. they haven t moved forward yet, and that s where we want them to stay. but they are considering it, right? they have not taken off the table the possibility of providing lethal weaponry to mr. p putin and to russian armed forces. they have not taken that off the table. we have not seen them move in that direction. on the battlefield, ukraine s president zelenskyy admits it s getting more and more challenging, especially in bakhmut and eastern ukraine. do they need to cut losses in bakhmut to compare for a counter offensive? that s a decision that only the commander in chief of the ukrainian armed forces can make, president zelenskyy, he s the
history and determined to ensure that war did not break out again in europe. today s statesman need to infuse their day-to-day decisions with a similar sense of history. 50 years from now, no one will remember whether growth slowed on the continent for a couple of quarters in 2022 or if brussels had to pay extra for natural gas from the u.s. what they will recall is the answer to one question. who won the war in ukraine? put p putin or the west? let us get started. here in davos, i had the opportunity to talk to the most important world leader who wasn t here, volodymyr zelenskyy. the interview was part of an event organized by the
richard engel thank you. joining me now is the british ambassador to the united states, ambassador karen pierce. good to see you and to be here in person. i appreciate you making that effort. let me start with the western intelligence thought today could be the day or essentially this morning could have been the day that russia invaded. it didn t happen. do you believe that the west essentially flooding the zone with this intelligence, if you will, has upended some of putin s plans? i don t think we know the answer to that question. i think i wouldn t get too hung up on dates. putin now has enough forces and capability on the border of ukraine to be able to launch a no-notice invasion. so in that sense it could come at any point from now. you quoted what the prime minister said about there may be a diplomatic opening. if there is a diplomatic
forward legislation on economic crime. it will enable things like asset seizing. it will enable travel bans. we have some of that legislation already. we re getting parliament in place where we can have more that will give us greater scope, greater powers. are you concerned that all of the sanctions that have been leveled over the last decade have not had the desired effect in changing behavior, but they ve actually allowed many of these extraordinarily wealthy folks to essentially hide their money and it s made sanctions harpeder to do, especially russia dealing with china. how hard is it to come up with a sanctions package that you feel like will have a bite? we re trying very hard to be able to do that in legislation. i think it will have an effect. the people who fund putin, and putin gets a lot of money from these oligarchs. he doesn t necessarily get all of his branches funded by the