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
table in the united states s mind and the big question is can russia actually give anything at this point that will disarm the crisis or are we going to see talks break down later today? that s talk more about the bargaining chips because president biden was just talking about the threat to democracy here in the u.s. and here he is dealing with it on a global stage overseas. what can they actually do to get putin to back off because just having these talks, these men being seen as peers, is exactly what putin wants. reporter: steph, and the white house is intentionally setting very low expectations for these discussions, saying that they don t expect any commitments to come out of this, but that s largely because they don t know whether or not russia is serious about having a diplomatic resolution to this crisis. what they have decided to do is go into these talks with various options for different scenarios, whether scenarios including whether putin was to further invade in ukra
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
when you are here. give us a reality check. we re watching what s happening across the world, but for those of us who don t focus on it, why do we need to care? you know russia inside and out. thank you very much, stephanie. we are talking about ukraine, let s not forget that there is no u.s. ambassador in ukraine and this time is not a fault of senate. biden hasn t appointed anyone. and these talks with putin is our hostage negotiation with a terrorist. he invaded ukraine in 2014 and now he is using the threat of further invasion to demand concessions and his concessions are about basically destroying eastern flank of nato. so this isn t about geopolitical interest of russia, national security, it s extortion in putin s interest of causing chaos, expanding his influence and staying in power. and it s completely backward. the free world should be making