republic, to help the government put down an uprising. however, when it came to supplying troops to invade ukraine, kazakhstan is not returning the favor. u.s. officials have confirmed to nbc news that kazakhstan has officially denied a request from russia for their troops to join the offensive in ukraine. kazakhstan is also not recognizing the independence of the russian-backed eastern ukrainian regions which sently undermined vladimir putin s entire pretext of invasion. would kazakhstan s troops really have made much of a difference in the fight against ukraine? i don t know. russia has a very, very big, very, very strong, very, very sophisticated military but putin needs allies. and if more and more of them start turning on him, we could be looking at a big change in dynamics for the kremlin and that includes allies within russia. this is the subject of an op-ed in the chicago tribune this week, if putin doesn t fear
it doesn t apply. but that s what people want. they want to no fly zone. they want to see harder sanctions. they want to see more from the west. they want bank transfers not to go through. they won anything from the west to not stop this advance. i heard them say if we are fading here, we re night we have heard that in the past and former conflicts, the idea that the ideology or that vladimir putin presents will spread further and further as this conflict goes on. people have been watching this on tv in the past few weeks they become familiar with some of this geographically. less with lviv. we ve mostly been talking about kyiv and cities in the east. lviv is where the diplomatic corps, and where a lot of people went from kyiv thinking it was going to be the safe place. in fact, there was some conversation about how the u.s. was prepared to evacuate the president, zelenskyy, to lviv. to keep him safer than he would be in kyiv.
remarkably rich out of what was the collapse of the communist system. there is some sense that, as a result of getting rich, particularly at the hands of vladimir putin, some of these people our in his thrall. that they either oh him money, or they paid him money, or they have to keep him happy. so few sanction them, you will have some effect on him. is that true? well, that s the theory, but it really depends on how you approach the sanctions. sanctions are very tricky tool of foreign policy, and they only work under certain circumstances. you have a patronage system in russia, like you have a lot of countries around the world. vladimir putin is not all powerful, he needs people to keep him in power where he is. and that s where the oligarchs and the small circle around him come in. the idea of trying to take a multi pronged approach with sanctions, where you both target the economy broadly, which is going to both impede putin s ability to continue
it s gonna be a huge step over what we re doing it against huge banks, and sanctions against them. but the pushback is a lot of it is related to europe s dependence on russian gas and oil. the fact that things like the swift system and other approaches that they have avoided so far, like it directly targeting the energy sector, we re not doing that because it s going to have an impact on civilians in citizens in the west, including in the united states. you heard president biden a couple of days ago with the first and management of sanctions to say that he s trying to do everything he can to make these really have an effect on russia but not have an impact on american citizens. we know that european states are taking it a similar approach. the problem is, sanctions will be most effective we go all the way. that will require some sacrifice of other countries. right, because you can t take them off the swift system, and you can t take them off the energy sector, without making that m
oligarchs. i don t buy it. i have been watching things that target oligarchs in russia since 2012, magnitsky act. there were more sanctions in 2014, and then more sanctions in 2018. i get it, i get the bank stuff is happening and nord stream 2. but this concept of getting close to people who are rich because of vladimir putin and who keep vladimir putin enriched is somehow going to change his mind. tell me why i should believe this. it s actually a common strategy coming from the treasury department for countries where you have situations like this. and so, for example, when we had the crisis in syria, when the crisis there unfolded in 2011, i was director at the nsa at the time and i helped craft those sanctions against the assad regime. it actually did not work here but there are differences between syria and russia. the difference is, the idea is if you target those elites around the leader, right, the