the equivalent of the cia there, says there are concrete indications war exercises with belarus last september were done to prepare for attacks against nato states. included in the report is a map of military targets in ukraine identified by russian intelligence. estonia reports russia has similar lists for other european countries. joining us now is the former president of estonia, tomas ilvas. he served from 2016 to 2016. with us founding partner and washington correspondent for puck, julia yoffe. good morning to you both. mr. president, i will begin with you. if you can flesh out for us further this intelligence report coming from estonia, which i believe is three countries to the north of ukraine and shares a border with russia. what more can you tell us about the report? well, this has been going on we have been putting this report out for a decade already, summarizing our findings in the
a few months later the soviets shelled their own people as a reason or a cause to attack finland. so there is a long tradition of this. you shoot your own and say the other side did it and therefore we have to start a war. i think that s a big worry right now. all right. thank you so much, mr. president. we greatly appreciate you being with us. obviously much to be concerned about regarding these false flag operations that we ve been warned about by the cia. thank you so much. julia yoffe, i m just curious. let me ask you the $64,000 question. what does vladimir putin want? what has he wanted from the beginning? is he getting what he has wanted or has it backfired against him? yes and no. yes, that is the $64,000, although with inflation it is
right. and russia doesn t want to be part. putin thinking that russia is a super power and should be at the table for all of these decisions, should be consulted and should be at the center of u.s. attention, the same way that russia is at america is at the center of russia s attention. right. julia, we have talked in media circles in the west for at least a decade or so about how russian foreign policy is driven by resentment, resentment from losing the cold war. i have talked about the 25, 26, 27 million russians that were killed in world war ii because of an invasion, and obviously that also hangs in the russian psyche. i m just curious. how connected is vladimir putin with the psyche of russians, whether it is on the resentment of america issue or whether it is on the fear of once again
look, i m getting close to flipping, pay attention to me. send a signal that everything will be okay and you ll pardon me or give me a pardon now and maybe i ll think differently. that might be a strategic move they would be making. but the other explanation for all this is these are just irrational people who do irrational things and say things publicly and to things like talk to tom arnold who appears on tv saying a bunch of crazy things. this is not the first time we ve seen people in the trump orbit show up on television or intermediaries of theirs show up on television, sam nunberg is a great example, doing things that make no sense at all. julia, you just wrote a great profile about don junior. one of the things that comes through in this and other literature in this sort of genre is like loyalty to donald trump sr. is a one-way street, even when it s family members. i mean there is an insane story in this profile about the president basically when he s going through a divorce
bargaining chips. with me now, i m joined by julia yoffe, msnbc justice and security analyst matt miller, former spokesman of the doj and legal analyst barbara mcquade, a former federal prosecutor. barbara, i ll start with you. two interesting things about michael cohen, aside from paling around with tom arnold. one is he seems desperate to cooperate. he sent every signal that he s interested in it. two, as far as i can tell, he still hasn t had a queen for a day or proffer session with any u.s. attorney. what do you make of that? yeah, it s hard to detect a coherent strategy behind what he s doing and saying, but i think a couple things. one is i have heard from defense attorneys and criminal defendants that the waiting is often the hardest part when you know that there s another shoe about to drop. either you re going to be charged or you re awaiting sentencing, it s a really difficult time for defendants. they have an urge to do something and yet they have to wait. and so it can b