yesterday, like peggy and the wall street journal. ed as well in his financial times piece concerned about a cornered putin. what s your take, david? what should we be looking at? so first, i share entirely the feeling that as putin becomes more cornered he becomes more dangerous. he has taken this conflict now into a genuine nuclear confrontation in which he is threatening that if russia is pushed back against the wall, if it feels its territory is threatened, it may use all weapons, very specifically implying that that would include nuclear weapons. the idea that they re going to be transformed into part of russia by these refrenda is outrageous, condemned around the
the past that actually far from blowing up in his face helped him achieve much with little cost. perhaps he just miscalculated. if he did miscalculate, what s the next move for putin? what s the next move also for western diplomats to try to figure out how to get him out of the corner? and i understand there are several options, but, as i have said before, the last thing we want is vladimir putin in the corner where he really does start thinking about nuclear weapons or does start thinking about the indiscriminate bombing and killing of ukrainians. well, you re exactly right, joe. he did miscalculate. you re right, a cornered putin is a dangerous putin because we don t know what he would or wouldn t do. also, at the moment it is not clear to me there s any constraints. there s no checks and balances. if he went on the nuclear alert, no one around him is going to
and look at the indiscriminate nature of the war even at a nuclear plant. so, my fear is that what we are beginning to watch is a cornered putin, a putin for whom things have not gone according to plan. but that is not somebody who maybe will quietly surrender. it is somebody who is going to double down. he s going to get more erratic. he s going to get more vengeful against the people of ukraine. this is this is a very scary time. the new sanctions announced by the white house tonight against russian oligarchs, again, you know, it s not going to stop the fighting right now. is it worth while? i think what s worthwhile is the way in which the white house has rallied the world, gotten everybody on board. the sanctions have been very tough, tougher than against any major economy before. they re exacting a real price. i think going after the oligarchs is a good next step.
to escalate. and continue to have an aggressive advance. now you have this cornered putin problem, according to the administration officials, where how do you continue to use these economic penalties to try and discourage putin from advancing but at the same time, how do you identify a certain way out and off ramp for him to get out of this war. we don t see that option at this po point. what you see is remarkable coordination. general milley, senator blinken. general milley focusing on the smaller democracies who are most threatened. they line up along russia s border. they get the history more than most americans do. secretary blinken saying for now, keeping the allies on the idea we cannot have a no-fly zone over ukraine because that essentially means you have to enforce it and then you end up either u.s. or nato plane gets shot down or russian plane gets shot down. you keep hearing, maybe something will come about. is that wishful thinking?
sure, sure, sure. we re trying to change the equation on the ground, as i said, to enable ukraine to survive and to repel this attack. you know what one senior washington official told the new york times recently? a cornered putin is a very dangerous animal. and if you add that to what fiona hill, a former senior adviser to the us government on russia said, which is that we are already in world war iii, it would seem to me it is time for europeans to be extremely worried about what could come next. well, i think we do have to be extremely worried and cautious. it is necessary to prevent escalation in this conflict, which is why we ve just discussed the no fly zone and why there are enormous escalation risks involved in that endeavour.