states is telegraphing what s going to be on the table. it includes talk of missile placement and military exercises in europe. richard engel is in ukraine. he will join us later in the show with the latest. velshi begins now. good morning. we are ten months away from what may be the most consequential midterm elections in modern history. the insurrection that erupted into violence one year ago is not only not over, it s on the ballot. as if it s something to be debated and not lamented. the house select committee investigating the january 6 attack continues its work with bennie thompson saying the committee would like to speak to former vice president mike pence voluntarily, if possible, within the month. that s going to be interesting to see how that goes down.
and really neither side got what they wanted from the big picture. russia did not get reassurance they would block ukraine from joining nato, and the deputy secretary of state wendy sherman said she s not sure they will. the russians said they have no plans to invade ukraine. but the u.s. wants to see russian troops going back to their barracks. so this was these were helpful talks in the words of the top u.s. diplomat here, in that they were able to talk about a number of issues aside from the major issues that were essentially nonstarters for the u.s., and they are issues they did discuss on a bilateral level, missile placement in europe, missiles in ukraine and
more discussion is needed. that is, specifically on the questions of arms control and nuclear weapons, missile placement, as well as transpatr transparency over military exercises. nato hopes the fronts about their massive restrictions, trade support for ukraine militarily and eastern european countries, that that will get ukraine russia to not invade ukraine. the best possible scenario for the u.s. and for nato out of all this is more discussions. but what we don t know is how much patience the russians have. the kremlin said yesterday that they have no reason for optimism yet, and, of course, the major x factor is what putin is thinking in all of this. christine? of course it is. all right, alex marquart for us in brussels. thanks, alex. laura? you know her face but do you know her whole story? the new cnn original story reframed.
of those discussions? well, they re going to try to figure out how to frame a response to what lavrov proposed today again. vladimir putin s proposed treaty. that is a nonstarter. but they re going to come up with substantive proposals that the russians have not yet responded to, but in writing about missile exercises, missile placement. so they re going to try to narrow some of the gaps, and try to entice the russians with areas where they can possibly agree. but i think then they ll be an exchange of dn an exchange of the documents between lincoln and lavrov, and probably vice versa, and then there will be another meeting. we might be on a shuttle back and forth with another meeting either in switzerland or some other capitol, but i think you re going to see not too long from now, a presidential level
ukraine and georgia. the u.s. and our allies have no interest in moving nato troops across the border into russia. i think it is much more likely that putin comes to the conclusion that the cost of this invasion will be much greater than the benefit, that the blow to the economy will be significant, but also he s going to meet up with a resistance in ukraine that is going to be beyond just the army. it s going to be a long-term insurgency with the ukrainian people rising up and perhaps dealing, you know, a long-term blow to the russian army. and to putin himself. so i think that calculation is one that he still needs to make and hopefully in the next few days we can continue to raise the costs for putin as he makes this final determination. and do you think that there is some window on, you know, arms control, missile placement, things that he might be interested in to try to find