when we have heard russian president vladimir putin publicly invoke the specter of his own nuclear forces, ordering them to go on something called special alert status, which is a term that the director of national intelligence, avril hanes, told the national intelligence community today doesn t have any true technical meaning in the russian system they re aware of. he addressed that order directly today while speaking to the committee on capitol hill earlier this morning. our analysts assess that putin is unlikely to be deterred by such setbacks and instead may escalate, essentially doubling down to achieve ukrainian disarmament and neutrality, to prevent it from further integrating with the u.s. and nato if it doesn t reach diplomatic negotiation. we sense putin is aggrieved and perceives this as a war he can not afford to lieu. lose. reporter: you heard haines
they don t want to actually go to war with the united states, they want to avoid that conflict if at all possible. this was a pretty comforting assessment to hear publicly because russian president vladimir putin several times over the last couple of weeks has publicly invoked the specter of his strategic nuclear forces. he has said publicly that he has ordered his nuclear forces to be put on special alert status. now, director of national intelligence avril haines addressed those in front of the house intelligence committee this morning. but we do think, as i indicated. assess that he is signaling and attempted to deter and has done that in other ways, for example, having the exstrategic nuclear exercises postponed until february begin then as a method of effectively deterring using
his nuclear forces as a way to say this could escalate and, therefore, nato should not get involved and that s been his main purpose in doing so. haines also said that this so-called special alert status that putin ordered his forces to be placed on is not a technical term in the russian system, at least as far as the u.s. intelligence community is aware. so bottom line here haines delivering a message that putin s nuclear messaging is just that, messaging. i guess there is some comfort to take in that, at least in this moment. i was also struck when she said he perceives this as a war he cannot afford to lose. we also have breaking news just into cnn. the florida state senate just passed the controversial don t say gay bill, which would regulate lessons about sexual orientation jaand gender identi in public schools. it now heads to the desk of
coincides with this remarkable dp geopolitical moment that we are watching with ukraine. so the u.s. is getting a realtime picture of how the u.s. is looking at russia specifically. the u.s. intelligence community assesses that russia does not seek, does not, i emphasize, seek a direct conflict with the united states and in fact would rather avoid that. now, this is something that broadly correlates with what we ve heard from our courses but it s certainly a reassuring message in this moment given that over the past couple of weeks russian president vladimir putin has publicly invoked the specter of his nuclear forces, saying that he or ordering that his strategic forces should be placed on special alert status. director of national intelligence avril haines addressed those public announcements directly in her testimony in front of the house intelligence committee just this