kaspirov. he understands the national game of russia chess very well and we re seeing a chess game here. putin is pushing, pushing, pushing, he also wants to consolidate defense around what he perceives as a less defendable borders for russia in the wake of nato. one other point to be made here, stephanie, is that putin also seeks to divide nato, he seeks to divide europe on this issue. he knows there s controversy about oil and gas and above all he would like to divide the united states and portray the biden administration as weak headed into our elections. so as always it s a game within a game for vladimir putin. a game within a game. admiral, gary, matt, carol, you have sufficiently scared an informed us on this monday morning. we re going to leave it there for now, but he will be watching these negotiations as the day continues. we ve now got to turn to the fight against the coronavirus. portions of the administration s
relationships across the atlantic with nato, i think we can count on our nato partners to stand with us economically, diplomatically and even militarily. now, that doesn t mean a nato troop deployment to ukraine in response to an invasion, but it probably means military supplies to the ukrainians, training, exercises, cyber, intelligence. look, we know that vladimir putin is probing here, russian proverb probe until you hit steel, then withdraw. i think we ve got a pretty good chance of him not conducting a full-scale invasion. and i will close by saying our negotiator, you saw her picture a moment ago, ambassador wendy sherman, she has a spine of steel. she is a terrific negotiator, she negotiated with the iranians, i want her in the chair for these talks. let s see where they go. all right. gary, while it is always good to see you, it s never good news
and the u.s. and our western allies are pushing to get russia to back off from a possible invasion. the biden administration saying no firm commitments will be made and the feeling is mutual for russia with officials warning to the u.s. not to overplay its hand. carol lee joins us from washington, matt bod ner and admiral james stavridis and gary kaspiroff. matt, the u.s. and russia did not sound optimistic on either side even going into these talks. tell us where we are now. reporter: so the case for optimism appears to be getting harder to make. russia is bringing a very, very hard line to these negotiations and essentially they published a list of demands just before the holidays that demanded a lot of nato, of the united states and the collective west, and to summarize those points they essentially want a partial dismantling of the alliance back
the demands of the terrorist putin, the invader putin, the man president biden correctly called a killer. does the united states negotiate with killers over how many people they can kill? then, gary, when you hear people talk about blinken leaving the door open for a diplomatic deal with russia, are you laughing at that? telling us that you re negotiating with a terrorist? blinken said yesterday that one of putin s goals was to restore the u.s. and i was amazed. it only took four u.s. administrations and three putin invasions of neighboring countries to understand putin s own words in his 2007 speech in munich 50 years ago. he said as much himself. a return to influence and to house international law but nobody listened and here we are. admiral, what do you think about what gary just said? i agree with grand master