to the 1997 status quo, that 1997 date was actually invoked directly by deputy foreign minister sergei ran could have just over the weekend as they walked into these talks and he said something essentially to the extent of rufgts has been giving on the nato issue for 30 years and it s time for the united states ornate toe to give something in return. so we re now just kind of waiting to see is russia serious about that demand? that s a very hard line to ride and one that we know to be unpalatable to the united states, to nato or is this just a very strong bargaining position, can the united states, for example, today offer something that russia might go for? one of the things that might be on the table is some kind of return to the intermediate range nuclear forces treaty that the trump administration withdrew from. we know that s something russia would probably love to see. they have said specifically they want to talk about american missile placements, nato missile placements in east
russia can even quite get at the cash that s coming in. i mean, you have to ask how are those imports being paid for? how are people paying for russian oil? if they re putting money into a russian bank account, well, russia doesn t have access to that bank account. also i think the biggest problem for putin is really not export revenue, it s actually the ability to import, which is not at all the same thing, and it s becoming extremely hard for rufgts to access the stuff it buys, which is crucial to its economy. so that gets us to china. can china be the solution? can china buy russian oil and then give russia, you know, a series of essentially a kind of barter, a remedy that can be used to buy stuff in china and, therefore, china is a huge economy? okay. there are a couple problems with that. one is in terms of china buying russian oil, you need to think a little bit about the physical side of stuff, that s one of the things we ve learned in this
welcome back to state of the union. this winter as president biden warned that rufgts was planning an attack on ukraine one of the big fears here at home was cyber attacks. that hasn t happened on a large scale yet. here with me is the chairman of the senate intelligence committee senator mark warner of virginia. thank you so much. i m going to ask you about signer in a minute, but first let s talk about the president s big speech yesterday in poland. he said many things about autocracy versus democracy but then he ad-libbed at the end saying that vladimir putin cannot remain in power. the white house has clarified that since, saying that the administration does not support regime change. do you think that statement did any damage? dana, there is one individual that s trying to make regime change in europe and that s vladimir putin trying to change the regime in ukraine and i candidly agree with the ukrainian prime minister who really has been extraordinary.
luke harding toss the author of collusion, secret meetings, dirty money and how rufgts helped donald trump win. he is a foreign correspondent with the guardian and joins me from london. thank you for taking the time to join us. i don t know if you had a chance to listen to natasha who said that president biden believes that vladimir putin is a rational actor but the big question is what exactly the rationale is. what is vladimir putin willing to negotiate on and i want to turn specifically to the cyber sphere because it seems as how with some of the cyber attacks that have been going on, disinformation campaign, it seems as though vladimir putin views the cyber sphere as an eek have a liesing factor for russia when they are economically and militarily in many ways inferior to the west. yeah, i mean, fred, i think that goes to the heart of the challenge that russia poses to the international community. if you cast your mind back to the cold war that it was tanks facing out in europe
georgia several years before. but i guess donald trump thinks if he keeps bringing up obama, obama, obama, maybe his lowest information supporters will look past the fact that he s actually doing vladimir putin and russia s bidding, just like he did at helsinki when you said he thrusted an ex-kgb agent more than he trusted mark s military and america s intel community. yeah, this is an easy one, there are facts that are easily learned. the president either doesn t want to learn them or isn t aware of them, which would be surprising. he does have a national security staff presumably that talks to him from time to time. but peter alexander asked a direct question, which was grounded in fact, and when he followed up the president of the united states said, stop being an organ of the democrats. is that all you got? stop being an organ of the democrats. if you can t answer a direct question based on the facts of why rufgts was kicked out of the