Zelenskys inauguration in may, i believe you testified it was one of the largest delegations . I believe it was. I cant be 100 sure. I believe it was the Largest National delegation. Okay. And included in the delegation was Secretary Perry . Secretary perry, ambassador sondland, myself, senator ron johnson was there and also the charge daffaires at the u. S. Embassy at the time, joe pennington. We talked a little bit this morning, but president zelenskys inauguration came together rather quickly . It did. I believe we had about three days notice in which to put the delegation together. Theres been some discussion whether the Vice President was going to be able to lead that effort and as it turned out he was not able to lead it. Do you have any information as to why the Vice President was unable to join . I dont. And mr. Morrison, do you have any information as to why the
Vice President was unable to participate in the delegation . No. Ambassador volker, you testified during your deposi
integrity. but behind the scenes you get a sense there is a bit more frustration creeping in. i just had a briefing from a government official here in the ukraine with knowledge of the call and he has spoken to me and said, look. you know, president biden did spell out all of the very tough sanctions that would be imposed on russia if it were to invade ukraine. but president zelensky wasn t less than impressed by that and said that he didn t believe that prospective sanctions would have the deterrent effect president biden thought it might have on president putin because he thinks russia would already have factored that in. what ukraine wants to see is up front sanctions perhaps with a delayed implementation that could be rolled back if in the words of this official russia behaves itself. apparently a month ago there were a lot of requests made by the ukrainian defense ministry of the united states for lethal weapons to help it prosecutor its war in the east to fight off a potential ru
the u.s. s own intelligence assessment the ukrainians sigh that invasion could come as early as next month and the weapons requested still haven t been arrived. they are expected to arrive this week and more have been requested that haven t come. finally the issue of nato. vladimir putin saying he wants to stop the nato expansion east wards and does not want ukraine brought into the western military alliance. president biden told zelensky on this call, look. it is up to individual countries to decide. he also told zelensky he didn t see ukraine joining the western military alliance until at least 2030. matthew chance in kiev, ukraine, thanks so much. let s discuss this. susan, let me start with what we just heard there from matthew in terms of the ukrainians behind the scenes being frustrated that the biden people, biden
remain a last resort u.s. officials say as the white house remains wary of roiling domestic gas prices. a senior nfc official says the white house will not take domestic considerations into effect if it comes time to decide what sanctions to impose on russia but experts warn if you don t impose energy sector sanctions you may not have the influence required to try to affect kremlin decision making. how important is security assistance when it comes to ukraine? the white house wanted $250 million. congress has added $50 million more as of right now. thanks so much. let s go now to cnn s matthew chance live for us in kyiv, ukraine. president biden and ukrainian president zelensky spoke about an hour and a half. you are getting new insight into what the two leaders talked about specifically. tell us. publicly of course the ukrainians are very grateful for the u.s. leadership on this issue and for president biden s support for ukrainian sovereignty and territorial
so no response yet from vice president mike pence s office to that, at least that we know of, but i mean, vice president pence and his role in this scheme for which president trump is now being impeached, it remains one of the still dangling threads here. he apparently is the one who went in person to europe to go meet with zelensky after the trump/zelensky phone call to reiterate to zelensky that he wasn t getting his military aid. he was briefed, according to his own advisers, on the call that happened between president trump and president zelensky in which trump made clear that zelensky wasn t going to get his military aid unless zelensky coughed up investigations of joe biden and his son and other types of politically motivated investigations that president trump thought would help him get reelected. vice president pence has said that he d be perfectly happy having his records of all his interactions with ukraine released to the public. here s a test of that, because his adviser te