The Megyn Kelly Show - Russia Invades Ukraine, with Mike Pompeo, Jim Geraghty, Konstantin Kisin, and Nataliya Gumenyuk

00:00:00.420 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations.

00:00:11.700 Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show.

00:00:15.220 Horror and international outrage at this hour as Russia launches the largest attack on the European continent since World War II.

00:00:23.800 We expect to hear from President Biden any moment now following a meeting with America's closest allies.

00:00:28.940 They are trying to determine the best course of action against an emboldened Vladimir Putin who has already threatened any country that interferes with, quote, consequences you have never seen.

00:00:41.860 So I'm questioning whether that's a reference to Russia's nuclear arsenal.

00:00:47.160 Overnight, Russian forces invaded Ukraine by air, by land, and by sea.

00:00:51.340 You can see, if you watch this on YouTube, the areas hit from this New York Times map that we're showing.

00:00:58.540 Basically, it's a map of Ukraine covered in red.

00:01:02.660 Reports suggest dozens of innocent people have already been killed, including civilians, many more injured as shelling and missiles rained down.

00:01:13.360 The news also rocking global financial markets as stocks plummet and oil prices soar.

00:01:17.820 No surprise there. And chillingly, it may have also emboldened China as we get reports this hour of Chinese fighter jets getting way too close for comfort with Taiwan.

00:01:31.100 We have every angle covered, the politics, the economics, the military action, with a series of great, great guests today, including former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

00:01:39.120 Plus, we will speak live with a reporter on the ground in Ukraine as to what she is seeing there.

00:01:44.940 But we begin today with Konstantin Kissen, a Russian-born British commentator who has been trying to warn the West about this very scenario.

00:01:55.080 He's one of the few who got this exactly right, predicting what would happen here.

00:01:59.660 And now he says the wool is being lifted from our eyes and it will have a massive impact on our lives and our children's lives for decades to come.

00:02:09.020 Konstantin, great to have you. You you've been right.

00:02:12.680 You predicted what would happen. And today you have a long thread that I was reading on Twitter that I thought, oh, my gosh, this is this is chilling because you put it in exactly the right perspective.

00:02:22.520 First of all, explain your ties to Ukraine so people understand how personal this is for you.

00:02:26.540 Well, I'm from Russia. My father is of Russian descent. My mother is of Ukrainian descent.

00:02:32.320 I'm Russian. Therefore, I was born in Russia, grew up there until I moved to the UK.

00:02:36.720 My wife is Ukrainian and we have family Russian speaking, a few Ukrainian speaking, both in Russia and in Ukraine.

00:02:44.300 Some pro-Russian in this conflict, some pro-Ukrainian.

00:02:47.100 So I think I have a breadth of perspectives from that region that I'm sort of incorporating into the things that I'm saying.

00:02:53.720 Mm hmm. And you you write about how many predicted Vladimir Putin will never invade.

00:03:00.600 He's not going to do that. He doesn't really have a reason to do.

00:03:04.280 He's just saber rattling and sort of sight of the anti-establishment voices on the left and the right telling us that, look, let's just make concessions.

00:03:12.720 We will secure peace. We don't want to upset Putin any more than we have.

00:03:16.620 You know, he's ticked off about the NATO thing. Let's just not let's just that's not a big thing for us.

00:03:21.960 Let's stand down and not upset the guy dead wrong, as you point out now.

00:03:26.780 Yeah, well, it hasn't worked out that way.

00:03:29.900 And, you know, I don't understand why people are so shocked and surprised today when there have been people predicting this who actually and the first person who predicted this is Vladimir Putin himself.

00:03:40.760 It seems to me that journalists both here and the UK and in America have simply failed to go and listen to his one hour speech that he gave two days ago in which he explains very clearly what is about to happen, why he believes it should happen.

00:03:52.920 And, Megan, if I just take a few seconds to lay out what he said, the first thing he said is he spent 40 minutes of an address to the nation talking about the history of the Soviet Union, Russia and Ukraine.

00:04:05.380 And the purpose of that section was essentially to explain that the existence of Ukraine is a mistake.

00:04:10.540 It should never have happened.

00:04:11.860 The existence of Ukraine is a result of a series of weak decisions made by weak Soviet leaders, starting with Vladimir Lenin.

00:04:18.880 And he explained that Russia should not hold itself to those decisions because they were made in the wrong circumstances by weak people and there were poor decisions at the time.

00:04:29.880 The second thing he explains is essentially that those weak decisions meant that the Russian nation, the Russian people, were split apart artificially by these weak decision makers.

00:04:41.540 And so a portion of the Russian nation has now found itself for some reason being part of Ukraine.

00:04:47.780 The rest of it, he says, is former territories of Poland and Hungary.

00:04:52.820 And from that itself, you knew that this was never going to stop with the two eastern regions, because if you look at the part of Ukraine that used to be in the Russian Empire, that used to be Russian speaking, that used to be populated by ethnic Russians, that extends all the way up to the capital, Kiev, and possibly beyond.

00:05:10.420 So there was never any way this was going to be just the two so-called breakaway regions.

00:05:15.900 It was always going to be this way.

00:05:18.580 And the second thing that he explains, and I really invite people to go and watch particularly the second part of the speech, is he sort of uses the term CIA more than Alex Jones.

00:05:29.280 He keeps talking about the CIA, NATO, it's not a defensive alliance, they're placing missiles right on our borders, and we have to defend ourselves.

00:05:38.400 And the rhetoric is distinctly Cold War-ish.

00:05:41.180 There's no doubt about it.

00:05:42.960 Vladimir Putin is clearly positioning this as we are in a Cold War scenario.

00:05:47.820 He talks about the fact that Ukraine was about to invade.

00:05:52.040 He talks about how the West is positioning its missiles.

00:05:55.060 He talks about the different rockets that America has, the different rockets that are in development now.

00:06:01.040 And he's essentially saying we have to defend ourselves against Western aggression.

00:06:05.060 That is how he is presenting it.

00:06:06.840 So the fact that he was going to invade was beyond any doubt for anyone who was paying attention.

00:06:11.060 The fact that that invasion would not be limited to the two eastern regions is beyond any doubt.

00:06:15.260 And I think it's also fair to say now, beyond any doubt, that he believes we're in a Cold War.

00:06:19.700 And I'm afraid we're going to have to take him at his word.

00:06:22.540 He also tried to spin a narrative about the sort of pro-Russian Ukrainians being oppressed, being roughed up, and that sort of-

00:06:31.060 Well, genocided, in fact, is what he said.

00:06:33.060 Genocided, right.

00:06:33.920 Referred to the Ukrainians as Nazis and sort of said, it's our duty to protect those folks inside of Ukraine who are Russian,

00:06:41.880 who are being treated this way by the Ukrainians.

00:06:44.680 And this is one area in which the Biden administration has tried to get out ahead of Vladimir Putin, saying these are false flag operations.

00:06:52.580 You know, these alleged incidents of violence that are committed in these regions have so far, as far as we can tell, been committed by Russians trying to make it look like Ukrainians are cracking down on these groups.

00:07:03.140 And Biden's been out there over and over trying to predict Vladimir Putin's plans were now told in an effort to expose the intelligence so that Putin would know we knew what he was going to do.

00:07:13.600 Not that it stopped him.

00:07:15.020 Not that not that it seems to have deterred him in any way.

00:07:17.360 But, I mean, this is an extraordinary moment because Ukraine didn't do anything.

00:07:22.620 There isn't a single thing you can realistically point to that Ukraine did to justify this.

00:07:28.040 This is just a land grab.

00:07:30.500 I mean, it really is the most shocking invasion for absolutely no reason we've seen since World War II.

00:07:37.080 That is true.

00:07:37.580 Now, I agree with you.

00:07:40.120 This is a land grab.

00:07:41.120 And the only thing I would say, of course, Ukraine has done nothing to deserve this.

00:07:44.300 But what Ukraine has done is the same thing the West has done, which explains why this is happening.

00:07:50.140 This is the point I've tried to make on my Twitter thread, which you kindly reference and elsewhere.

00:07:54.320 And I've been talking about this for years now.

00:07:56.560 The West, Megan, is weak.

00:07:58.540 It is weak.

00:07:59.360 It is divided.

00:08:00.240 It is distracted.

00:08:01.000 And I don't mean that America doesn't have the greatest military in the history of the world.

00:08:04.760 Of course, it does.

00:08:05.540 But what does it matter if you're not willing to use your hard and soft power around the world?

00:08:10.020 If we spend more time talking about gender pronouns or whether cloth masks stop the spread of COVID or focusing on all this other tangential nonsense, when there's very real things going on in the world.

00:08:21.080 And the moment the West takes its eye off the ball.

00:08:24.060 And I'm so glad, Megan, this is one of the things that I think makes you such a robust commentator on these issues.

00:08:30.140 You make the point about China.

00:08:31.920 And this is what I've been trying to get people to understand.

00:08:34.000 And this is not about evil Vladimir Putin or evil Xi Jinping.

00:08:38.880 This will happen if the West withdraws, if the West is weak, is perceived to be weak, if it's distracted.

00:08:45.700 The people around the world who've always wanted more land, more power, more money, more prosperity, who want to knock America off its perch at the top of the pantheon, they're going to do what they've always wanted to do.

00:08:58.040 And frankly, I don't blame them.

00:08:59.300 Right. I mean, you I know you guys on your podcast podcast talk about this all the time.

00:09:04.100 We do as well about, you know, for lack of a better term, wokeness.

00:09:08.080 It's not what this is about, but it's related because we're so intent on on navel gazing internally, talking about how bad we are convincing others, how bad we are convincing ourselves, how terrible we are.

00:09:19.780 Rather than leaning into the fact that we remain the leader of the free world, that others believe it, too.

00:09:25.220 And they see that we're distracted with this internal nonsense.

00:09:27.480 And indeed, in the case of Vladimir Putin, he touts it, too.

00:09:30.400 He pumps it with his bots to try to create more division.

00:09:33.160 And then we lean into that division.

00:09:35.080 And meanwhile, he's moving into Ukraine.

00:09:37.700 And now she's taking a serious look at China.

00:09:40.280 I mean, at Taiwan.

00:09:41.500 And and what are we doing over here?

00:09:43.240 We're talking about Black Lives Matter and whether we should have biological men swimming against biological women because they call themselves women.

00:09:51.140 This is the stuff upon which we found ourselves obsessed.

00:09:53.740 While the while geographic borders may be shifting, freedoms may be lost.

00:09:59.000 We've been living in a dream world, Megan.

00:10:01.100 We've been living in a dream world where we pretend that people can change their sex and or, you know, the most important thing for our society is to focus on what something that happened 300 years ago and all of this other stuff.

00:10:14.160 And frankly, I know that you had your run ins with President Trump and I was certainly not a big fan of his at all.

00:10:19.320 I wasn't comfortable with the style.

00:10:20.740 I didn't like some of the things that he said.

00:10:22.320 But I think there is no doubt that if he'd be still president, this wouldn't have happened.

00:10:26.920 And that's because, you know, this is something that human beings have known for thousands of years.

00:10:32.480 Civis pacem parabellum.

00:10:33.800 If you want peace, you must be strong.

00:10:35.600 You must prepare for war.

00:10:37.340 And if you are weak, people will see that and they will take advantage.

00:10:40.960 And that is what we're seeing.

00:10:42.040 So what we need to do is, first and foremost, stop being so divided.

00:10:46.540 We've got to come together.

00:10:47.560 And this is the most important point, Megan, that you made so beautifully is if we don't believe in our values in the West, how could we possibly defend them?

00:10:56.680 If we think that we're evil, racist bigots, why on earth would we try to spread our values around the world or defend people who want to be free, who want democracy, who want liberty, who believe in the same things that we believe?

00:11:09.040 Why would we possibly support and defend them if we don't even like ourselves?

00:11:14.400 Two more things on President Trump.

00:11:16.600 Yes, he was strong, but he was also unpredictable.

00:11:18.900 And that had a great way of keeping our foreign adversaries off kilter.

00:11:22.940 You never knew what he was going to do.

00:11:25.040 You knew that it was going to be in America's best interests and you knew that it could be shocking and that it would be strong and it would be decisive.

00:11:31.340 And it might not even please his base back here at home, which made him a bigger threat to people like Putin.

00:11:36.120 But the second thing is he kept our energy resources flowing.

00:11:40.840 You know, he he shut down the Nord Stream, too.

00:11:42.720 He didn't allow this pipeline of money to be flowing to Vladimir Putin from Germany and Europe and at least try to fight it.

00:11:48.940 And that's one of the first things Joe Biden revived when he came into office was basically Russia's coffers making Putin richer and more emboldened.

00:11:58.900 So while Putin I mean, sorry, Biden may talk tough about Putin.

00:12:02.460 His actual behavior really hasn't been.

00:12:05.160 And Trump, in a way, was exactly the opposite.

00:12:08.020 He said things about Vladimir Putin like, oh, you know, O'Reilly said he's a killer.

00:12:11.160 He said, well, what about us?

00:12:12.140 We killed a lot of people, too.

00:12:13.020 So wasn't the rhetoric wasn't as tough, but the actual behaviors actually deterred Vladimir Putin in a lot of meaningful ways because they kept him a little poorer and a little bit more off kilter.

00:12:24.460 And I think what you're likely to see is, in my opinion, this is in terms of consequences for the world.

00:12:30.180 This event will have repercussions that will eclipse maybe even 9-11 in terms of the sort of impact it will have on the world.

00:12:36.780 And one of the things I think this spells is the complete and utter end of globalization.

00:12:41.720 The idea that we're going to buy our gas from Russia or buy, you know, mission critical technology or manufactured goods from China or like we do in the UK, we're going to sell off our electricity networks to foreign nations.

00:12:56.000 All of this is over.

00:12:57.240 The energy security is going to come right to the top of the list.

00:13:00.400 Countries are going to make sure that they can heat their pensioners' homes, irrespective of whether Vladimir Putin allows them to or not.

00:13:07.500 And I think this is going to lead to a massive rejigging of the geopolitical chessboard with consequences, which I think at this point are very difficult to predict.

00:13:15.960 OK, and that leads us to this sort of, you know, for lack of a better term, America first mentality of a lot of folks on the anti-establishment right here in America who think that the way you're talking sounds more like a neocon.

00:13:29.320 We can't be the policeman of the world. This is somebody else's problem. And say more like, I don't care what's happening in Ukraine.

00:13:35.380 I care about what's happening in America's borders, you know, and not familiar with the country.

00:13:39.820 It's not in NATO. So we have no contractual obligation to defend them.

00:13:43.680 So, you know, we got our own problems here to them. You want them to know what?

00:13:48.000 Well, I hear them and I would agree with them pretty much all of the time.

00:13:51.880 You know, I was a vehement critic of the war in Iraq. Even the war in Afghanistan, to my mind, was a mistake.

00:13:58.260 And we've seen that, obviously, in the last few months with what's happened there.

00:14:02.700 The Syria, Libya, I mean, we could go down the list. All of those were terrible mistakes.

00:14:06.700 And the West has, you know, undermined its own moral credibility on these issues.

00:14:10.640 But I don't think that I first of all, I'm not a neocon at all.

00:14:14.760 But what I am trying to get people to understand, Megan, is this ain't about Ukraine.

00:14:20.360 This is about you. This is about your children.

00:14:23.260 If Vladimir Putin thinks we're in a Cold War, it doesn't matter that you want to put America first.

00:14:28.540 Yes, America shouldn't be the policeman of the world.

00:14:30.900 But the question you have to ask yourself is, who is?

00:14:33.800 If you want to vacate that space that America has occupied, who is going to fill it?

00:14:40.160 Who is going to come in and be the world's top dog?

00:14:43.240 Who is going to come in and set the rules by which we play?

00:14:46.440 Now, you've got two options. You've got Russia or China, right?

00:14:49.880 Do you want either of those nations to be the one that's leading the world?

00:14:53.160 Because you've got to remember, yes, America shouldn't necessarily have to be the world's policeman.

00:14:57.580 And yes, I mean, the parallels with the BLM situation are so strong here,

00:15:01.140 because, of course, we had the whole defund the police thing, which resulted in a massive spike in crime.

00:15:06.260 And this is exactly what will happen on the international stage if America withdraws, as it has done in recent decades.

00:15:12.140 You're going to see people doing things that we in the West don't want to happen.

00:15:16.820 So, you know, I'm against the illegal foreign wars.

00:15:20.180 I'm not suggesting we send troops to Ukraine right this second to fight against Russia.

00:15:25.140 I think that would be a terrible mistake for the world at this point to be talking in that way.

00:15:28.980 But I think people need to realize this ain't Iraq, guys.

00:15:32.400 This ain't Afghanistan. It's not Syria. It's not Libya.

00:15:34.560 This is a strategic adversary who is taking advantage of our weakness.

00:15:39.240 And they are looking to see how we respond, just like the Chinese are.

00:15:43.440 And how we respond is going to determine the fate of the Western world for decades to come.

00:15:48.800 Hmm. No one's talking about putting boots on the ground in terms of U.S. troops.

00:15:53.580 But there is a call. There's a push.

00:15:55.480 I've seen it from the left, from the right, from all quarters now for serious sanctions against Russia, sanctions that would actually hurt.

00:16:04.340 Not, you know, you know, a couple of banks, not a couple of oligarchs can't access, you know, their pads in London.

00:16:09.920 But there are a couple of ways we could go.

00:16:12.680 I mean, we could amp it up to the point where they can't access their money through U.S. banking,

00:16:17.100 where we throw out the Russians who are attending American colleges, who are the children of said oligarchs and so on.

00:16:23.480 I mean, you could go down the list.

00:16:25.220 And certainly the Nord Stream 2 pipeline should be suspended permanently, should be killed permanently.

00:16:30.940 That should not be revivable.

00:16:32.320 And maybe Europe will give some thought to reviving its own energy sources, you know, rather than disconnecting its nuclear plants.

00:16:38.680 So it's reliant on Russia in a way that, as we see, is destabilizing.

00:16:43.860 They'll rethink, you know, what happens when you rely on the windmill to power an entire nation.

00:16:49.440 Your thoughts on it?

00:16:51.380 Well, exactly what's going to happen.

00:16:53.040 And, of course, we wait to see what sanctions and other measures will be introduced and how that plays out.

00:17:00.320 I don't know.

00:17:00.860 But I think your point about energy security, if you remember, we talked about it earlier.

00:17:04.360 You know, what Germany has done to its own nuclear industry by just purely on ideological grounds, shutting down nuclear power plants, making themselves reliant on Russia, is just an absurd move politically.

00:17:16.420 And I think it reflects a naivete that, as I say, I think is over.

00:17:21.220 Globalization is over.

00:17:22.280 The idea that you can have other countries who don't have your best interests at heart supporting you with energy.

00:17:28.620 It's not viable.

00:17:30.180 It's not sustainable.

00:17:31.120 We can't be relying on Chinese manufactured goods for the things that make the difference between our people surviving and dying in hospitals.

00:17:38.960 We can't be doing all of that.

00:17:41.180 We have to be self-sufficient.

00:17:42.440 And I think the biggest shift that is going to come out of this is the end to globalization.

00:17:46.620 And people are going to come back to the realization that in order to secure the peace, you have to be strong.

00:17:53.720 Well, and I don't think Joe Biden's going to have much of a choice here at home.

00:17:57.100 And we're already looking at $4 gallons of gas, projecting it could go up to $5 gallons of gas soon.

00:18:02.800 And I realize the people in Ukraine are suffering a lot more than paying high gas prices right now.

00:18:07.320 I mean, innocent people are being murdered for nothing, for nothing.

00:18:10.360 They did nothing wrong.

00:18:11.460 So we have to keep our pain in perspective.

00:18:14.880 But Biden's also looking at midterm elections and then a presidential race in the not-too-distant future after that.

00:18:21.300 And realistically, is he going to have to open back up America's energy resources and allow not just us, but maybe our European friends to start tapping into them?

00:18:32.280 Yeah, I'd be surprised if this isn't the death knell of the green agenda, at least for the moment.

00:18:36.580 I think the sort of net zero that we talk about here in the UK, our electricity and gas bills are about to double here, literally overnight, double, Megan, because of green subsidies, because we're so desperate to solve that particular problem.

00:18:52.640 But I think what we're starting to see is these sort of airy-fairy ideas about how wouldn't it be nice if we all lived in little mud huts or whatever these people want?

00:19:01.220 No, it doesn't work that way.

00:19:02.920 There are some very serious men around the world who are coming for us.

00:19:06.840 And in order to deal with that, we're going to have to supply our own energy and deal with that issue as a priority.

00:19:13.040 Otherwise, we are going to rely on them and we're going to be vulnerable to blackmail and weak in the face of that.

00:19:18.920 So I think you're going to see some very dramatic changes in public opinion on these issues and in terms of the political leadership's decisions.

00:19:25.980 But I'm curious to see how American public opinion and British public opinion will break on this issue, whether people understand the seriousness of what we're dealing with or whether the people we talked about earlier who want to pretend this is some kind of Iraq or Afghanistan situation are going to triumph.

00:19:43.120 Well, I guess we wait and see.

00:19:43.960 You know, Constantine, one of the nicest pieces of existing in the digital world, right, with my show here and so on, as opposed to being tied to cable, is the exposure to a whole host of really smart, interesting thinkers who you wouldn't see on cable just because they don't have a deal to be a Fox News contributor, for example.

00:20:04.300 You are one of them.

00:20:05.820 I love, love, love your podcast called Trigger-nometry, Trigger-nometry.

00:20:11.180 And Constantine is always worth the listen.

00:20:13.520 Check it out.

00:20:14.380 And thank you so much for your insights today.

00:20:17.180 Thanks for having me, Megan.

00:20:17.920 It's a great pleasure.

00:20:19.080 All the best.

00:20:19.780 Wow.

00:20:20.720 Coming up next, we're going to be joined by Jim Garrity of National Review as we await Biden's latest statement.

00:20:26.700 He's coming out now, we're told in moments, on the war in Ukraine and what it means for the United States.

00:20:34.260 Don't go away.

00:20:34.800 New reports at this hour of fighting near the former Chernobyl nuclear power plant.

00:20:49.340 The Ukrainian president says his forces are trying to prevent Russian troops from capturing it.

00:20:54.260 Chernobyl, of course, is the site of that devastating accident back in 1986.

00:20:57.560 And the fear is that this situation could disturb nuclear waste, among so many other problems.

00:21:05.080 Joining me now, Jim Garrity, senior political correspondent of National Review, has been doing great coverage of this.

00:21:10.380 Jim, so good to have you here.

00:21:11.480 So reading your piece this morning, you know, you don't mince words either.

00:21:17.100 You talk about The Wall Street Journal not mincing words.

00:21:18.640 You don't mince words either, talking about how we are witnessing the largest land war in Europe since 1945, an unprovoked attack by an autocratic superpower with nuclear weapons.

00:21:30.180 Exactly the nightmare scenario that the U.S., NATO and the European Union aimed to prevent.

00:21:35.820 This is the worst case scenario.

00:21:39.480 So, I mean, I'll pull a Rich Lowry on you on a scale of one to 10.

00:21:43.900 How bad is this?

00:21:45.220 Eight or a nine.

00:21:46.360 I suppose, you know, if I say the worst case scenario, the really worst case scenario would be this somehow spilling over across the border and Russian forces shooting on NATO ally forces.

00:21:55.540 But clearly, this is not a limited incursion into the Donbass region.

00:22:00.340 This is not a – clearly, it wasn't a feint.

00:22:02.340 Clearly, this was not saber rattling and Putin trying to get some sort of cheap concessions or something like that.

00:22:08.460 This looks like a full – you know, this is a full-scale land invasion.

00:22:11.940 It certainly looks like they want to conquer the whole country.

00:22:15.840 Meg and I have this, you know, nightmare scenario where I'm going to tell you something.

00:22:19.300 By the time we end the conversation, the circumstance on the ground will have changed.

00:22:22.500 But as of right before we got on here, there was footage on CNN of Russian paratroopers around an airport that was like 15 miles from Kiev.

00:22:32.940 And so this looks like an attempt to encircle the Ukrainian forces in the eastern part of the country, cut them off, and effectively take over, if not the entire country of Ukraine, take over a big chunk of it.

00:22:45.620 And, you know, maybe leave some sort of rump state on the western part of the country.

00:22:51.440 This is really bad.

00:22:52.500 This is, you know, really, really bad.

00:22:54.620 And I don't – it clearly is no way to restore the status quo.

00:22:58.560 This is probably the best case scenario we can hope for at this point is that Ukrainians fight hard, fight well, extract a real, you know, price on Putin.

00:23:07.780 It sounds like the resistance in the northern part of the country is going pretty well.

00:23:11.740 That's where the Chernobyl plant is.

00:23:14.300 In the south, where the, you know, Russian navy is hammering them from offshore, it sounds like that's going pretty badly.

00:23:21.540 But again, this is the fog of war.

00:23:22.860 It's all very preliminary.

00:23:24.480 It could all change very quickly.

00:23:26.260 That having been said, you know, hope – all in all, like, Russia's going to end up with a big chunk of Ukrainian territory.

00:23:33.320 It's just a question of how much right now.

00:23:35.580 They're – right now they're saying – Russia's saying that they're targeting only military installations inside of Ukraine.

00:23:41.480 They claim that they're not going to target civilians, though some have already been hurt.

00:23:45.380 We're hearing reports.

00:23:46.460 Then what Ukraine's saying right now is help and at least make it a no-fly zone.

00:23:52.500 We need people like America to step in and at least create a no-fly zone because as soon as they knock out these military installations, in are going to come the ground troops and then we're really going to be exposed.

00:24:04.200 So we need a no-fly zone right now.

00:24:07.160 Yeah.

00:24:07.460 At this point, I have not heard a lot of serious talk about that here in Washington or in other European capitals.

00:24:13.760 I don't think that's a likely scenario.

00:24:15.680 I think you may – yeah, you're going to see – there's going to be more talk of economic sanctions, which, oh, by the way, I think if you want to summarize the problem for the Biden administration, the U.S. government, our NATO allies, and the EU, is that we came to a gunfight with economic sanctions.

00:24:31.780 And Vladimir Putin is not a guy who is deterred by economic sanctions.

00:24:35.760 There is no amount of pain you're going to be able to inflict on the Russian economy that is more important to him than his vision of himself as this grand figure of history who is going to reclaim the Russian ancestral cultural homeland.

00:24:50.220 This wasn't about money to him.

00:24:52.280 This was about something more important to him.

00:24:54.040 And so I think the only thing that had a chance of deterring him was, you know, letting – making it very clear that every inch of Ukrainian soil he and his, you know, military forces were going to try to take were going to pay a high price – pay a high price in blood.

00:25:09.060 Like I said, there's some – we've sent them the Javelin anti-hank missiles.

00:25:12.080 Apparently, they've got anti-aircraft missiles.

00:25:14.380 There are some reports of the Ukrainians inflicting some serious casualties on the Russians, but it's still pretty early here.

00:25:23.960 Vladimir Putin was hell-bent on this.

00:25:25.880 And I think it is the fact that he launched the attack right as the U.N. Security Council was meeting.

00:25:31.740 Oh, by the way, the Security Council meeting was just chaired by Russia in this painful irony.

00:25:36.020 What a joke.

00:25:36.640 Yeah, you know, again, I am – for about, you know, 20 years now, you've seen this argument in U.S. foreign policy circles.

00:25:45.780 Generally, folks on the right saying the U.N. is ridiculous.

00:25:48.860 It doesn't matter.

00:25:49.840 It didn't do – it's just a debating society.

00:25:52.360 It has no real impact on the facts on the ground.

00:25:56.340 And folks, generally the Democratic Party, generally on the left, is like, no, no, no, it's this important instrument of international diplomacy and all that stuff.

00:26:02.680 Well, I think it's now – it's not quite the League of Nations, but it's utterly irrelevant to deterring aggressive forces.

00:26:10.400 And, you know, you can see this in Russia and Ukraine.

00:26:13.480 I think you can say the U.N. clearly was a non-entity in the Taliban's takeover of Afghanistan.

00:26:18.040 And I would not count on the U.N. being an effective tool in deterring conflict between, say, China and Taiwan.

00:26:24.520 Yeah, even today you had Richard Haas of the Council on Foreign Relations in the New York Times saying,

00:26:29.820 what we really need to do is take it to the U.N. General Assembly.

00:26:32.200 You know, I'll give you the thing about Russia heading the Security Council.

00:26:35.940 They're not really going to sanction themselves because they're going to say, well, we need to go to the General Assembly.

00:26:39.020 Like, really? Still? The U.N.? They're dead to us. They are no good to us. We have to forge on without them.

00:26:44.200 And early this week, the New York Times, who I'm not in the usual business of praising,

00:26:48.880 had this very detailed account of how Russia was denounced by all of our allies at the U.N. Security Council.

00:26:54.380 The last line of the article was, and then the council adjourned, taking no action.

00:26:59.420 It was just this, like, yes, okay, we can all go there and we can say this is terrible.

00:27:03.840 And you saw a lot of that last night.

00:27:05.140 In fact, I think the Ukrainian ambassador, when the Russian ambassador was insisting that, you know,

00:27:10.240 I think they called for de-escalation and the Ukrainian ambassador holds up his phone and saying,

00:27:15.420 here's Putin announcing they're invading, you know, kind of this ridiculous.

00:27:19.120 Right. He's not listening to you. This is absurd.

00:27:22.040 Even like you, as you point out, we brought sanctions to a gunfight.

00:27:24.740 Like, even sanctions aren't going to do it. Never mind some condemnation.

00:27:27.680 And by the way, this is crossing the wires, Jim, per Reuters, Chernobyl power plant captured by Russian forces,

00:27:34.960 citing an advisor to a Ukrainian presidential office.

00:27:38.440 It'll be the first of many reports we hear along those lines as they move further inward.

00:27:43.940 Megan, on camera, I'm afraid I'm going to turn into a meme.

00:27:47.120 This is bad. This is really bad.

00:27:50.420 And you might be thinking, like, why would Russia go there?

00:27:52.360 Well, if you look at a map, first of all, Belarus, which is kind of this, you know, crony state, sidekick state to Vladimir Putin's Russia.

00:28:01.640 They went to a whole bunch of Russian troops, went into Belarusian territory for joint military exercises,

00:28:07.100 which fairly obviously were a preparation to invade Ukraine from another front.

00:28:12.440 And just to pause, Jim, we're putting the map up there. Belarus is right next to Ukraine.

00:28:16.220 It's it's by Poland. And it's another country that apparently is much more friendly to Russia because we're getting reports that they're helping Russia out with respect to this attack.

00:28:24.820 I think a lot of Americans never even heard of Belarus prior to today.

00:28:27.600 So it's just, you know, just just just to get our bearings.

00:28:30.860 It's there. And it's not really helpful to us at the moment. Go ahead.

00:28:34.100 And Lukashenko, who's the, you know, been called the last dictator in Europe over there.

00:28:38.560 He's kind of Putin's mini me. Just picture a guy who goes along with everything Russia wants to do, you know, gets a lot of financial support from Russia and basically sees himself as Putin's sidekick.

00:28:51.200 Well, the shortest distance between a this is where I wish I had my John Madden telestrator here.

00:28:55.540 The shortest distance between a Ukrainian border and Kiev is coming down from Belarus and a part of the the Chernobyl exclusion zone where the nuclear power plant was and where all the radiation was back in 1986 is right in that area.

00:29:09.600 So it's one of those things where a lot of people have I've seen people asking, why would Russian troops even go anywhere near that?

00:29:14.900 Well, it's in the way that you could go around it.

00:29:17.280 And Lord knows if I was commanding troops, I wouldn't want going anywhere near those places with that kind of radiation.

00:29:21.960 Russian. But, you know, basically, if there's anything we've learned, if you ever watched that Chernobyl miniseries on HBO, Russians don't worry about radiation the way the rest of us do.

00:29:31.680 They're kind of laid back about that in a way that sometimes gives them that warm, glowing feeling a little later on.

00:29:37.800 It's true. It's very true. So.

00:29:40.680 All right. So let's just talk about. Yes, we brought sanctions.

00:29:43.140 And that's what we expect Joe Biden to say in moments, soon as he takes to the mics, that we're going to be giving the super severe sanctions.

00:29:50.060 I mean, we sort of withheld some. We trickled some out and they're going to trickle more out.

00:29:54.880 And now this should be the super severe sanctions. But what's what's that going to look like?

00:29:59.520 And realistically, what could it look like that would that would make him hurt?

00:30:04.900 Right. Like that would actually hurt him in terms of the money.

00:30:09.200 Before I tear into our president during a ongoing foreign policy crisis, I'll begin by saying something a little bit nice.

00:30:15.280 I think Biden has focused on this. I think he has really tried.

00:30:19.260 I think he's met with, you know, foreign leaders and communicating with them recently.

00:30:23.300 I think he's been trying to galvanize NATO to to create a unified, tough response to this.

00:30:30.000 I think fairly obviously it failed. It did not succeed.

00:30:32.640 And I don't know if Biden's the kind of guy who's capable of doing this, but I'll give him I'll give him a few points for trying.

00:30:37.580 I do note that and I wrote about this at pretty, pretty considerable length this morning in my newsletter, The Morning Jolt.

00:30:44.460 All winter long, Biden, Anthony Blinken, Vice President Harris, they all kept using this phrase swift and severe sanctions.

00:30:51.560 We're going to unleash sanctions on him like he's never seen. These are the strongest sanctions we've ever seen.

00:30:56.200 And so you kind of created these expectations of, OK, you know, this this should really be something.

00:31:01.420 When they unveiled them this week, the first thing is they said they're going to come out in tranches, little groups.

00:31:07.020 They could just use the term little groups. I don't know why they use the term tranches, but whatever.

00:31:10.740 And it was there weren't nothing. I mean, they're targeting the two banks that are closest to the Kremlin and Russian military targeted a couple oligarchs and their family members.

00:31:18.760 And they made it tough for Russian sovereign debt. Those are steps.

00:31:22.780 And I'm not going to say it's nothing. But the first thing is that if you're doing it in tranches or small groups, well, then it's not swift and severe.

00:31:30.260 If you're saving some for later, if you're saying, well, later, we're going to use some of we might do some of this stuff later on.

00:31:34.540 But the big one that everybody wanted to talk was the swift financial banking system.

00:31:38.860 Basically, it's how you move money from one country to another.

00:31:41.320 And we did this once against the Iranians. And it basically, you know, really have a huge impact on a country's economy.

00:31:47.200 As of this morning and before we started having this conversation, Megan, it sounded like a couple of European countries, including Germany, did not want to go forward with this.

00:31:55.160 And I'm looking at that and I'm thinking, like, what are you waiting for? Mushroom clouds?

00:32:00.240 You know, this is a full scale invasion. Like what? Oh, well, it's not bad enough for us to cut off Russian banks from the rest of the world.

00:32:07.280 You know, that that step is mind boggling.

00:32:10.160 There are a whole bunch of other gestures that are not not necessarily gut punches, but I think are useful in symbolism.

00:32:16.520 Back in 1983, Ronald Reagan, after the Russian shot down Korean Airlines passenger jet 007, they blocked Aeroflot, the Russian airlines, from landing in U.S. flights.

00:32:27.840 And I think right before we started having this conversation, the United Kingdom announced they were taking that step.

00:32:33.340 We could expel the children of Russian oligarchs and Russian government officials that are studying in American universities and colleges.

00:32:39.180 I mean, we may do this. We just didn't do this, you know, a couple of days ago when it might have had more impact.

00:32:45.800 Blocking Russian oil and gas import. We have been importing a lot more oil and gas from Russia over the past year.

00:32:51.380 And that is extraordinarily frustrating. And I can't help but think that one of the reasons Putin is walking around and feeling so cocky is because world energy prices are so high.

00:33:00.080 And his position as an oil and gas exporter gives them more financial leverage over Europe and stuff like that.

00:33:06.000 Oh, by the way, I'm glad we put sanctions on the companies that were building the Nord Stream 2 pipeline.

00:33:12.080 Again, a day late and a dollar short, because once Russia controls the pipelines that are currently running through Ukraine, they don't need Nord Stream 2 nearly as much as they did before.

00:33:22.000 Can you just expand on that? Because I think most people haven't been following that that closely.

00:33:24.980 I understand Nord Stream 2 is bad because that gets energy from Russia to Germany and keeps Russia's coffers filled.

00:33:32.240 But his backdoor plan doesn't seem to mind because if he if he controls Ukraine, then what?

00:33:38.820 Go ahead and expand on that. Yeah. So for a long while, you know, U.S. officials look at this and said, oh, this doesn't look good.

00:33:44.320 This is going to you know, this will be great for Germany if you if you like being dependent upon Russia for your energy.

00:33:49.860 If you don't like that, then this is a terrible idea. Unfortunately, Gerhard Schroeder, the former German chancellor, is serving on the board of a Russian energy company.

00:33:59.760 Picture a former president going and taking a job on like a Chinese energy company or something like that.

00:34:05.260 That kind of would be the equivalent there. And Angela Merkel thought this was a terrific idea.

00:34:09.740 And this is, oh, by the way, this helps them shut down nuclear plants.

00:34:12.800 This allows them to in their minds, well, we're going green because the oil and gas isn't coming from us.

00:34:17.440 It's coming from somewhere else. I don't think that is a, you know, terribly great long term thinking there.

00:34:23.280 But for a while, the U.S. was trying to pressure them. The Trump administration pressured and Biden came into office and initially was saying we oppose the Nord Stream 2 pipeline.

00:34:30.680 The Germans really wanted to go ahead with this. And I, you know, the Biden administration dropped their opposition to Nord Stream 2.

00:34:37.780 I think there's this idea that, well, we'll make this as a unilateral concession.

00:34:42.220 And if we do this, you know, Putin and Russia will be more cooperative with us.

00:34:46.620 Surprise! It didn't work out that way. Vladimir Putin was not any more cooperative or nice over this.

00:34:51.440 And I think that, you know, the Biden administration ended up with egg on their face.

00:34:54.540 They turned back to to opposing Nord Stream 2. And it's worth noting that no gas has gone through it yet.

00:35:00.680 Germany said a couple of days ago that they were halting the permitting process.

00:35:05.320 And we're not going to let you go ahead with that paperwork there. That's going to slow you down.

00:35:09.640 Megan, my attitude is where are the eco-extremists when we need them?

00:35:13.500 Now I've got a pipeline I'd really love to see them blow up.

00:35:16.280 And I would not mind to see someone, you know, wink, wink, blow that up to ensure that that pipeline never gets completed or used to minimize this.

00:35:25.420 And oh, by the way, we should be developing all of our energy resources and saying, look,

00:35:29.020 you don't need to be dependent upon this maniacal autocrat for your energy supplies.

00:35:33.700 We're the United States of America. We got oil. We got shale. We got gas. We got wind. We got solar.

00:35:39.080 Liquid natural gas. We're going to send oil to everybody who needs it. And we're not going to be bullies about it.

00:35:44.100 Boy, it's a great opportunity. But hey, we've got to save the world. Greta Thunberg says we can't do that.

00:35:48.180 Oh, my Lord. And you were predicting, I mean, because people do wonder what what's going to happen back here at home and what what should we be expecting?

00:35:56.180 And certainly higher gas prices is on the list. We're going to see maybe Europe, you said, flooded with refugees.

00:36:04.680 People pay attention to that just now. I mean, frankly, you know, you travel's open back up.

00:36:09.480 People are starting to go to Europe again in a way that we couldn't during the pandemic.

00:36:13.560 And certainly we're going to see that in places like Poland. They're already predicting that as citizens try to flee.

00:36:19.120 And all eyes, of course, are on China as well. I mean, what do you think Americans should be thinking about right now?

00:36:25.740 Uh, not much good. Maybe we'll get a really good HBO sequel series to Chernobyl out of this.

00:36:33.600 That's that's the only silver lining that I can find here.

00:36:36.600 Yeah. I mean, the first thing is you're going to notice it at your gas pumps, probably when you fill up this weekend.

00:36:40.900 Not that gas was cheap before, but this is probably going to end up being a you know, I wouldn't be surprised if there was an immediate panic bump.

00:36:47.980 And then just generally, you've got a major foreign policy crisis.

00:36:51.560 I assume there'll be at least some effort on a full on sanctions and some sort of effort to reduce U.S. imports of Russian oil supplies.

00:37:01.500 And oh, by the way, we're getting into the spring and summer and traditionally, Americans drive more than so.

00:37:06.100 All of that is going to expand demand and supply is going to remain about the same or maybe even constrained more because of this conflict between Russia and Ukraine.

00:37:13.480 So gas prices are going to be terrible.

00:37:15.460 We saw how the waves of refugees coming in from Syria and also some from Afghanistan and other parts of the Middle East were destabilizing to European politics about, you know, the middle bomb mid to late Obama years, shall we say that I suspect, you know, you will see some echo of that in European politics.

00:37:36.120 But not right before we came on, apparently Chinese state run television is running some sort of documentary or program that is comparing Ukraine to Taiwan.

00:37:46.500 That doesn't sound ominous.

00:37:48.060 Now, does it?

00:37:49.020 I don't know if this means, OK, yeah, the Chinese invasion is going to come immediately.

00:37:53.340 I do think China is watching this very closely.

00:37:55.720 And just to just to update you on that, because I mentioned this during our a block, but you weren't here yet.

00:38:01.820 Reuters is reporting that Taiwan's Air Force scrambled again on Thursday to warn away nine Chinese aircraft that entered its air defense zone, according to Taiwan's defense ministry.

00:38:12.320 This on the same day as the invasion in Ukraine.

00:38:14.980 So obviously they're watching and maybe flexing some muscle.

00:38:18.520 I mean, I don't think where anybody's predicting Chinese invasion sometime soon, but there's no question that how we handle what's happening right now in Ukraine is going to be front and center for the Chinese.

00:38:30.600 Yeah, I mean, Chinese incursions of Taiwan airspace by itself is not necessarily anything new, but it definitely feels differently this morning.

00:38:37.600 The other thing which I think is we haven't necessarily recognized or, you know, only a few Americans are kind of really thinking through the ramifications of is, you know, back in the end of the Cold War, Ukraine had a lot of people said that Ukraine had nuclear weapons.

00:38:52.820 The bet was that Soviet nuclear weapons were stored on Ukrainian soil.

00:38:57.380 Ukraine by itself did not have the ability to detonate or use those weapons.

00:39:00.460 But part of the deal was to say, OK, we're going to ship them all back to what's becoming Russia.

00:39:04.680 And in exchange, we, the West, will ensure you'll never get invaded by Russia.

00:39:09.740 And that was a deal between the United States and Russia and Ukraine.

00:39:15.340 Maybe was the UK involved in that, too?

00:39:17.080 But I mean, yeah, basically everyone in NATO was partied to all this.

00:39:20.920 And I think it's almost like Russia doesn't care about treaties, you know.

00:39:25.060 Wow.

00:39:25.800 Shocking.

00:39:26.300 They went back on their word.

00:39:27.440 And now so are we.

00:39:28.800 You can't trust a former KGB lieutenant colonel.

00:39:31.360 Who can you trust these days?

00:39:32.860 Well, but that's a good point, because what's the lesson there?

00:39:36.220 OK, give up your your nukes and we'll have your back, except when we don't, which we aren't.

00:39:41.500 And what other countries now that don't have nukes like Japan?

00:39:45.840 I know South Korea are thinking, hmm, opportunity.

00:39:49.880 As every country that is not already explicitly guaranteed protection under the nuclear umbrella of the United States is now thinking.

00:39:57.000 It's got to be thinking very seriously.

00:39:58.700 If we don't have a nuke, somebody someday is going to do the same thing to us.

00:40:01.980 The only way we can ensure our sovereignty, our security and our security and preserving our borders as they are is to have a nuke of our own.

00:40:10.400 We have a lot of bad consequences coming out of what's happening between Russia and Ukraine right now.

00:40:14.880 I think a giant international nuclear arms race could be another one of those really bad ones.

00:40:18.720 Because do I would I trust Japan with a nuclear weapon?

00:40:21.360 Sure.

00:40:21.600 Would I trust, you know, these are generally stable, wise, non reckless regimes, but not all governments around the world are or maybe they have a stable government now.

00:40:32.620 But at some point down the road, somebody who's a little more cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs ends up running those countries.

00:40:38.000 So that was another reason we really wanted to deter this.

00:40:42.020 And I think that, you know, despite trying to I think you can point to some some Biden went into office wanting to create a kept emphasizing a stable and predictable relationship with Russia.

00:40:55.580 I think it was very clear Vladimir Putin never wanted stable or predictable government.

00:41:00.940 You pointed out on National Review that Biden sounds like John Wayne talking about, oh, he's never dealt with me, you know, wait until I get in there.

00:41:09.800 And now it's like, yeah, you got in.

00:41:11.580 He couldn't care less.

00:41:12.420 He's actually more aggressive than ever.

00:41:13.620 Yeah, you know, there are a lot of criticisms to be made about Joe Biden and your program is only two hours, so I won't list out all of them.

00:41:21.700 But one of the ones that comes to mind is how much he talked on the campaign trail as if these problems were easy.

00:41:29.180 And, oh, you know, we're going to shut down the virus.

00:41:31.520 Right.

00:41:31.720 And all these other examples of how we're going to have these really quick.

00:41:34.680 Well, you know, it turns out Vladimir Putin is a real cold, heartless, evil SOB who is always looking for leverage.

00:41:41.500 And it was not just a matter of, oh, if we're nicer to him or, you know, he's going to be intimidated by the longtime senator from Delaware with his cool aviator glasses.

00:41:49.580 You know, in the end, you know, there was this, I think it was about, you know, late 2019.

00:41:55.260 There's this short video that Biden recorded for his campaign.

00:41:58.300 It's on Twitter and I'd link to it today.

00:42:00.080 And it's it's him saying, you know, Putin knows that when I become president, his days of tyranny and intimidating the U.S. and Eastern Europe are over.

00:42:07.740 And it just looks ridiculous.

00:42:09.660 It just looks absurd.

00:42:10.540 No, by the way, I can think of right now.

00:42:12.920 All I can think of right now, Jim, is chocolate, chocolate chip.

00:42:18.060 Sorry.

00:42:18.820 And, you know, look, every president, you know, every presidential candidate oversimplifies things on a campaign trail.

00:42:25.860 But I think Biden is particularly guilty of making people think this was going to be easy, getting in there and not really knowing how he was going to achieve his goals.

00:42:34.740 And it turns out Putin is not nearly as intimidated of Biden as Biden seemed to think he was going to be.

00:42:41.160 And he does not have NATO is not as unified as they.

00:42:44.460 I mean, the fact that the European countries wouldn't go along with these swift banking restrictions makes it sound like for the past three months, Biden has been saying swift and severe sanctions.

00:42:55.120 When in the background, NATO is like, no, no, we're not doing this.

00:42:59.080 We're not on board with all that.

00:43:00.360 Right.

00:43:00.580 Which he telegraphed.

00:43:01.540 He telegraphed at that never ending presser where he said too much about too many things.

00:43:05.580 And then the White House had to clean up.

00:43:06.900 But he was telegraphing NATO divisions.

00:43:08.300 And it wasn't, as it turns out, just about the pipeline, the Nord Stream 2 pipeline.

00:43:13.220 A couple of things that I want to get to.

00:43:15.060 I'll squeeze in a break.

00:43:15.880 But I want to talk about whether do we think Putin just made a veiled nuclear threat?

00:43:20.480 And is that just utter nonsense, given the, you know, obviously consequence of that?

00:43:24.980 And also the call by the Ukrainian leader and the president there now saying he needs everyone, everyone, anybody who has had any weapons training to grab a weapon and fight.

00:43:35.300 And that sounds like it's getting more dire by the moment.

00:43:37.880 We're going to pick it up right there.

00:43:39.140 After a quick break, I want to tell the audience, update on President Biden.

00:43:41.600 His scheduled remarks now pushed back to 1.30 p.m. Eastern time.

00:43:45.940 We're going to keep an eye on it.

00:43:47.220 If he begins on time, we'll take some of it.

00:43:49.360 And more with Jim Garrity and then Mike Pompeo right after this.

00:43:58.620 Few updates for you here.

00:44:00.800 Representative Michael McCall on the House Foreign Affairs Committee saying that we haven't seen anything like this since Hitler.

00:44:07.880 Hitler invaded Poland in World War II.

00:44:09.600 I just hope this is not the beginning of World War III.

00:44:14.340 Similar responses from others across the aisle.

00:44:17.380 Former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta saying what's at stake is whether we've learned the lessons from World War II that we cannot allow a tyrant to invade a sovereign democracy and get away with it.

00:44:26.140 NATO Supreme Allied Commander Admiral James Stavridis coming out and saying this is the beginning of a significant campaign.

00:44:33.800 If this isn't shock and awe, he says, I don't know what would be.

00:44:37.380 We're on a rocket ride back to the 1930s.

00:44:40.240 Putin will attempt to terrify the Ukrainian people.

00:44:43.600 It's scary, Jim.

00:44:44.860 It's scary what's happening.

00:44:45.980 And when you look at what Putin himself said, it gets even scarier.

00:44:49.520 He said, no one should have any doubts that a direct attack on our country will lead to the destruction and horrible consequences for any potential aggressor.

00:44:56.120 Continues on.

00:44:57.320 To anyone who would consider interfering from the outside.

00:44:59.900 If you do, you will face consequences greater than any you have faced in history.

00:45:05.480 Some speculating that may be a dark threat reference to the use of nuclear weapons.

00:45:12.620 But realistically, unless Putin's gone completely out of his mind, he knows that's not an option.

00:45:19.320 I can give you a pessimistic take, an optimistic take, and then a bonus pessimistic take based on that statement.

00:45:24.960 The first one is that, at least on paper, according to stated Russian military strategy, they don't see nuclear weapons as something that's like far and away separate from their use of their conventional military forces.

00:45:36.960 They've always said that they see that as just another military tool and that they will not hesitate to use them in the, you know, in the execution of their objectives.

00:45:45.820 Now, that may be, you know, that sounds like saber rat.

00:45:48.140 Like nobody likes to talk about, oh, we're just going to use nuclear weapons willy nilly.

00:45:51.080 But for what it's worth, it's not like they would say, oh, this is, you know, something we've never done.

00:45:55.180 We have a no first strike policy or anything like that.

00:45:58.380 The optimistic take I can give you is that even if you think Putin is now losing his marbles and apparently has spent the better part of the past two years in remarkable isolation, which is, you know, and I think a couple other leaders, like the leader of Finland who said they met him, seemed like his personality had changed.

00:46:14.840 That he had become angrier, more erratic, you know, this is not great news to if you're nothing about that is reassuring.

00:46:22.900 That said, if you want to take Ukraine, you don't want to take a radioactive wasteland, which is one of the reasons I wouldn't send my troops through the Chernobyl zone.

00:46:30.680 But by and large, if you, you know, if you're, if you're using a nuclear weapon on a target, you're basically making it unworkable.

00:46:39.180 And the last thing that kind of comes to mind is just the requisition.

00:46:41.680 Oh, Putin wouldn't do that.

00:46:43.120 I don't think that sentence should be in our vocabulary anymore.

00:46:45.480 I don't think you can rule anything as completely out of the question for what Putin is willing to do.

00:46:50.240 My goodness.

00:46:50.840 One of my visits over there, I interviewed him at Kaliningrad, which is the site of the nuclear weapons arsenal.

00:46:55.940 And the thought of something from that site being used on these innocent Ukrainians, on those of us who may step in to help in some way, again, not boots on the ground, but in some way militarily or otherwise.

00:47:07.080 It's chilling.

00:47:08.260 Jim Garrity, you're a rock star.

00:47:09.960 Thank you so much for all the great analysis, not just today on the show, but all the time at National Review and on the editors.

00:47:15.200 You're a gem.

00:47:15.820 Thank you.

00:47:16.940 Always enjoy it, Megan.

00:47:17.720 Thanks for having me.

00:47:19.220 OK, after this, we're going to cover Putin's Ukraine invasion from all angles, including with former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

00:47:24.940 What would Trump be doing now?

00:47:27.640 I'll ask him next.

00:47:33.680 Mike Pompeo served as the secretary of state under President Trump.

00:47:37.580 He's also a former CIA director, congressman and army officer who was stationed in Germany during the Cold War.

00:47:44.020 In a column today for Fox News, he wrote Putin is about the business of trying to bring back the Soviet Union.

00:47:50.160 We must not allow that to happen.

00:47:52.860 Secretary Pompeo, good to have you here.

00:47:54.540 Welcome.

00:47:55.240 Megan, thank you very much.

00:47:56.240 It's great to be with you.

00:47:57.400 So for a while now, there's been, you know, sort of the well, he doesn't want the expansion of NATO.

00:48:02.160 He doesn't want Ukraine and NATO.

00:48:03.600 That makes sense.

00:48:04.500 Why would he want that?

00:48:05.480 You know, we could understand that.

00:48:06.760 But it's really I mean, I had an argument on this show with Adam Curry about it.

00:48:10.860 And I was saying, look, I've interviewed the guy repeatedly.

00:48:13.000 I did a lot of prep for those interviews.

00:48:14.520 And if there's one thing you know about Putin, it's that he views the collapse of the USSR as a calamity of world order.

00:48:22.880 And that his goal is to try to cobble together something that bears some resemblance to the old Soviet Union before he departs this earth.

00:48:31.480 Is today step one in that or maybe not even step one, maybe step four.

00:48:36.160 I don't know.

00:48:36.580 But the biggest step yet.

00:48:37.900 Well, Megan, I think you have it exactly right.

00:48:41.160 That's what I wrote about in the piece that you described.

00:48:43.400 We we need to take him at his word.

00:48:45.440 He talked about this in some remarks he gave a month ago.

00:48:47.580 And indeed, last summer, he openly talked about his desire to restore what he believes is rightfully Russia's or the former Soviet Union.

00:48:55.580 If you've spoken to him at all, it sounds like you did.

00:48:58.380 This is in his heart.

00:48:59.440 It's been on his mind.

00:49:00.420 And whether it was the effort in Georgia or the effort in Crimea or the expansion of the warm water port in the Mediterranean, each of these is a step along to way what he sees as rectifying this historic embarrassment, the destruction of the Soviet Union.

00:49:16.320 Sadly, the people of those places, those former satellite countries don't want to be anything to do with Russian leadership.

00:49:22.560 And thus, you see the conflict today in Ukraine, the Ukrainian people standing, fighting valiantly, trying to remain separate and apart from this thug and this autocrat.

00:49:32.260 What did we do?

00:49:32.900 Right.

00:49:33.120 He did invade Georgia.

00:49:34.460 I think that was 08 and then Crimea, 14 and so on.

00:49:37.780 My memory is we imposed some sanctions.

00:49:39.800 We said the same kind of stuff under Barack Obama sanctions.

00:49:42.560 You're going to pay.

00:49:43.820 And then they kind of went away.

00:49:45.720 They got watered down.

00:49:46.880 People didn't live by them because Europe needs Russia's oil and gas resources and so on.

00:49:52.940 To me, the lesson to him all along has been he'll pay a little for a while.

00:49:58.600 Megan, I think that's exactly right.

00:50:00.940 Add to that, I believe deeply what he saw in Ukraine for him was a green light.

00:50:05.240 He saw an administration that wasn't prepared to impose any real costs on anyone for bad behavior.

00:50:11.080 And so you add it up, right, those historic things that you talked about over what's now the last 15 years.

00:50:16.900 And I think he sees that this is his moment.

00:50:18.680 This was the right time to engage in this.

00:50:20.880 The strikes that we're seeing today are deep and complex and well-prepared.

00:50:26.180 They're enormously broad.

00:50:29.700 And they're focused.

00:50:30.820 They're focused on the singular mission of making Ukraine a satellite state.

00:50:34.180 He'll replace the government.

00:50:35.280 And he will see how long it is before the West walks away and just says, well, never mind.

00:50:40.840 Good enough.

00:50:41.720 We'll let him have this one more piece.

00:50:43.300 Don't don't do it again.

00:50:45.300 And then what?

00:50:46.820 Because that's really the worry, even for America firsters, you know, people who don't want us to get involved in Ukraine.

00:50:52.780 They're sick and tired of us getting involved in foreign conflicts.

00:50:55.480 I think even those folks are worried.

00:50:57.340 OK, if we ignore this one, what what does he do next?

00:51:02.780 Megan, I'm an America firster.

00:51:04.380 I'm worried about Ukraine, too.

00:51:06.780 I'm also worried about Ukraine.

00:51:08.380 This this will put Vladimir Putin on a roll.

00:51:10.360 He will see how his power increased.

00:51:12.600 Don't forget, Ukraine has a significant piece of the global wheat supply.

00:51:16.800 These are these are economic things that if he's able to get control and obtain the capacity to tax and regulate this place, will have real benefits to him.

00:51:25.180 It may not be two years.

00:51:26.420 It may be costly in the short run.

00:51:28.360 But over an extended period of time, he will have benefited from this enormously.

00:51:31.940 We can't let that happen.

00:51:32.980 And it matters to Americans, too.

00:51:34.440 You can see what's happening in our markets today.

00:51:37.940 Crude oil prices higher.

00:51:39.080 That means higher gas prices at the pump for every American.

00:51:42.940 Natural gas prices will increase.

00:51:44.460 That means heating your home will get more expensive.

00:51:46.080 I talked about corn and wheat.

00:51:48.400 I'm from a cans.

00:51:49.280 I'm from Kansas, a farm state.

00:51:51.520 This means fertilizer will be more expensive.

00:51:53.540 This will roil the global economy.

00:51:56.000 And that's never good for Americans.

00:51:58.320 OK, so what about the Baltic states?

00:51:59.980 Do we think that?

00:52:01.200 I mean, just hypothetically, I realize we're not there yet, but could he could he start go collecting those?

00:52:05.480 I mean, what do you think it would take to get America involved militarily in a serious way?

00:52:11.200 Because we cannot we cannot have a Hitler.

00:52:13.640 I mean, we cannot have a madman in Europe running around conquering other countries that have done nothing to it.

00:52:19.900 I hope this moment will be the one that convinces American leadership and NATO and the European countries that this is serious business that they need to get about doing what we asked them to do in 2017 and 18, which was to spend some money.

00:52:35.000 You all are spending less than two percent of your GDP to defend your own nation.

00:52:37.980 And it seemed like a long ways away, I suspect, if you were German or French or you were sitting on the Atlantic and not on the eastern edge of freedom's frontier.

00:52:46.940 I hope this will create the resolve necessary.

00:52:50.520 We're a great power.

00:52:51.660 Europe has the capacity to defend itself.

00:52:53.760 We can do those things, Megan.

00:52:54.740 We shouldn't shy away from that.

00:52:56.500 It's not about American soldiers.

00:52:58.640 It's about making sure that we use America's power in a way that secures and defends the things that matter most.

00:53:03.760 I've spent my whole life on this project.

00:53:06.120 I was a young lieutenant that patrolled the then East German border.

00:53:09.560 We know how to take down regimes just like Vladimir Putin's.

00:53:13.260 He thinks we're afraid to do that, that we've lost our will.

00:53:16.260 Well, we have to make clear to him that we've not lost our will.

00:53:19.340 And it's not about words.

00:53:20.760 It's not about meetings at the UN or NATO meetings.

00:53:23.660 This is about real deeds that will put pressure on his regime and convince him that it's just too costly to do what it is he's intending to do.

00:53:31.100 OK, but how?

00:53:31.620 That sounds like sanctions.

00:53:33.520 Let me start with sanctions.

00:53:35.060 The list is long.

00:53:36.240 They put the waiver on the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, telling Vladimir Putin, knock yourself out, make Germany dependent.

00:53:41.160 We had sanctioned it.

00:53:42.220 We were on the cusp of having it shut down.

00:53:44.960 Biden came in and released it.

00:53:46.720 The sanctions in place today, maybe this afternoon he'll announce a whole bunch more.

00:53:50.300 I pray that he will.

00:53:51.500 But the sanctions he's put in place today have told him this is just this is just a small step along the way towards your ultimate success.

00:53:58.480 I promise you, Vladimir Putin sees the sanctions that Biden announced yesterday and says, oh, they don't care about this.

00:54:05.560 Let me give you a third idea.

00:54:07.140 A third idea would be to announce today that we're going to start supporting the world's largest energy exporter, the United States of America.

00:54:14.020 We are going to flood global markets with American crude oil and American natural gas, cutting in half, maybe by two thirds the price of gasoline and the price of crude oil, refined products and natural gas.

00:54:27.140 This is a John McCain joked about it being a gas station.

00:54:29.860 And if we cut off his revenue stream, the profitability of Russian energy, this will deal an enormous blow to the people of Russia.

00:54:37.660 And then ultimately, I hope that they will put the pressure on Vladimir Putin that we ultimately the list is long.

00:54:43.460 Megan, we have many things we can do.

00:54:45.580 It's not just sanctions.

00:54:46.500 They're one tool.

00:54:47.180 But diplomacy without the threat of real pain infliction, you know that you interviewed him.

00:54:53.340 He understands one thing, power.

00:54:55.080 We need to demonstrate it.

00:54:56.480 Mm hmm.

00:54:56.880 Yeah, you you made a point in a tweet or an article that you wrote recently saying that what the Biden administration did with Putin's finances is we basically put his economy on super warp by allowing the Nord Stream to like we we've said, yes, great.

00:55:12.640 Let's make him even richer.

00:55:13.840 Let's make Russia even richer.

00:55:15.580 This will be great.

00:55:16.180 And without asking, wait, what does Putin do when he's feeling powerful?

00:55:19.820 What does Putin do when he's controlling oil markets and knows he's got this spigot of money coming in?

00:55:27.020 Megan, today is not the day for politics, but when you put climate change at the top of your foreign policy agenda, right, when the first person to go meet Vladimir Putin from the Biden administration is not Secretary Blinken or the president, but Secretary Kerry, when you put that at the top of the list, the bad guys just smile.

00:55:44.540 They shake your hand and say, you bet we'll work on carbon right alongside you.

00:55:48.280 And then they proceed to pollute and invade.

00:55:52.120 What do you think the number one thing Trump would do if you were president would be?

00:55:55.000 I think he would have done a lot more to prevent this in the first instance.

00:55:59.920 I get asked all the time, would this have happened?

00:56:03.080 You know, I can't prove it, Megan.

00:56:04.660 I think it's unfathomable that it would have happened while President Trump and I were in charge of American national security.

00:56:09.580 We had a deterrence model that worked, that convinced dictators all around the world that we would impose real costs on you.

00:56:17.400 The Iranians certainly lived that in the strike on Qasem Soleimani.

00:56:21.340 We were clear about the things that mattered.

00:56:23.420 We did put America first and drew a set of lines and then were prepared to enforce them with enormous viciousness.

00:56:29.680 I think that's what we do today.

00:56:31.160 I think we wouldn't piecemeal out sanctions.

00:56:33.280 I think we wouldn't have capped America's energy production.

00:56:35.640 I think we would that we would be doing the things that I have described here this morning.

00:56:40.020 And I'm convinced Vladimir Putin would have a very different sense of opportunity.

00:56:45.400 One of the disturbing things about what we're witnessing is the cozying up of China and Russia.

00:56:50.580 And, you know, the concern is real that the more we alienate Putin, the more he runs into the arms of President Xi.

00:56:58.200 And where does that leave us?

00:56:59.800 I know you've been honest about the fact that President Trump really wanted you to take a look at that.

00:57:04.700 And how do we drive a wedge in between those two as opposed to create circumstances where they're embracing one another and that it was a lot harder than it looked.

00:57:13.120 So can you give us some perspective on the risks that we're looking at here and and whether it's still possible to sort of pull a Nixon and like divide the two of them by giving one of them what they want?

00:57:24.280 Yes.

00:57:24.580 The the reverse Kissinger, they are trying to use Russia as the nation that pulled closer to the West.

00:57:31.960 Right.

00:57:32.260 President Trump, truly, he did.

00:57:34.660 He wanted to he wanted to find places that we could work with the Russians.

00:57:38.000 And so I endeavored to do that, both as CIA director and a secretary of state.

00:57:42.140 We we took down some terror plots there.

00:57:44.260 Indeed, Vladimir Putin thanked me for that work.

00:57:46.760 Right.

00:57:47.220 Saving lives, demonstrating that working with the West provided a more secure country for you with the kinds of things that we were working on.

00:57:53.920 It was difficult to do, Megan, to be honest with you.

00:57:57.080 We had two and a half years.

00:57:58.100 We had the the Russia hoax hanging over our heads each time I would travel to Russia.

00:58:02.420 The stories were Pompeo, Russian asset.

00:58:04.960 Oh, my Lord.

00:58:06.240 They're still they're still writing.

00:58:07.620 They're still writing.

00:58:08.240 Oh, he referred to him as strong.

00:58:09.900 He referred that they're still picking apart your language with respect to Vladimir Putin.

00:58:13.100 You can say a leader is strong while still trying to criticize their their policy and coming after that.

00:58:17.520 Anyway, we don't need to waste time.

00:58:18.860 Keep going.

00:58:19.920 Goodness gracious.

00:58:20.740 I spent my whole life trying to destroy the Communist parties around the world.

00:58:24.240 I don't intend to walk away from that.

00:58:25.840 Now, I will say one more thing.

00:58:26.840 You know, if you don't acknowledge your enemy's assets, their capabilities, you'll you'll call them the JV and you'll end up getting your head cut off.

00:58:34.700 That's what President Obama did to ISIS.

00:58:36.840 We had to come in and solve that problem for him and for America as well.

00:58:41.600 Look, Putin can can understand American power.

00:58:45.400 But what we ought to do is find a place where his look to the West is desire to say, can I really find a way to find a relationship with the West that works for me was something that we were intent upon seeking common course, common.

00:58:58.360 We we didn't get all the way.

00:59:00.320 Make no mistake about it.

00:59:01.400 He will cozy up to the Chinese Communist Party if we don't get him looking West.

00:59:05.140 I think that most Russians would prefer to look West rather than East.

00:59:08.860 And he knows this, too.

00:59:10.660 He will always be the sidecar.

00:59:12.340 He'll always be the second fiddle to Xi Jinping.

00:59:14.460 They have a massive economy and one point four billion people.

00:59:17.780 He's never going to be Xi Jinping's true partner.

00:59:20.720 I think Putin knows that.

00:59:22.920 But if it is convenient for the moment to work alongside the Chinese Communist Party, they they do share a desire to expand their their hegemon, their space.

00:59:33.980 And they also share a deep understanding that human life doesn't matter.

00:59:37.560 They in that sense, Xi and Putin are cousins.

00:59:40.440 We do our best to create space as between them and do our do our best to make sure that we have that resources and assets and singular focus on the Chinese Communist Party that the next 50 years are going to demand.

00:59:54.260 How I mean, how likely is it that we do see action by China with respect to Taiwan now?

00:59:59.540 Megan, I'm worried about it.

01:00:03.500 I've been worried about it for a long time.

01:00:06.300 Xi also is someone who seizes moments of opportunity.

01:00:09.940 He might well see this as a moment of opportunity as well.

01:00:13.360 He's already put an enormous amount of pressure on Taiwan.

01:00:15.780 I'm actually going to travel there a week from now to demonstrate American support for the people of Taiwan and to talk with their leadership about the things they can do to defend themselves.

01:00:26.840 We have to wonder whether Xi Jinping might not say if America is not prepared to lead, if they're not prepared to build out alliances with Australia, with South Korea, with Japan, with India, with all of our our economic partners in the region, then maybe I just can get a green light.

01:00:44.580 And maybe I, too, could do something like what Putin is doing today in Ukraine, in Taiwan, and the world will simply shrug its shoulders.

01:00:51.280 That'd be really bad for the United States of America to go on about the reasons.

01:00:56.740 But we should start with the very semiconductors that people are listening to your podcast on were most certainly made in either South Korea or Taiwan.

01:01:05.380 We need to do our level best to make sure we continue to be able to defend our national security and not depend on high-end technology that comes from a place that would be under the control of Xi Jinping.

01:01:16.580 Well, and isn't this one of the proposals with respect to Putin to take away his ability to access those semiconductors and lean on technology firms and other countries providing him to not do so?

01:01:27.740 Because, I mean, that would certainly undermine his abilities militarily and otherwise.

01:01:32.000 And let's not forget about hacking.

01:01:33.680 That's one of the things we worry about.

01:01:35.260 A cyber attack is Putin can attack us, yes, with nukes.

01:01:38.060 But, of course, there's, you know, mutually assured destruction, that whole thing.

01:01:41.500 But cyber and and he's already done that in Ukraine.

01:01:44.280 The question about whether that might be coming our way if we get too involved in this looms.

01:01:49.000 They might.

01:01:49.900 They have a very capable cyber force.

01:01:52.260 There's no doubt about that.

01:01:53.640 We're pretty damn good, too, Megan.

01:01:56.260 We're pretty capable at both responding when required, and we're pretty good at defending and protecting ourselves from that as well.

01:02:04.020 There can be a hiccup.

01:02:04.980 If some bad actor wants to do something offense, it's easier to play in defense in the cyberspace.

01:02:10.400 But make no mistake about it.

01:02:11.640 Vladimir Putin knows we're very capable there as well.

01:02:14.280 It does suggest one other thing, Megan.

01:02:16.720 I do worry about this problem of cascading threats.

01:02:20.360 You said Russia.

01:02:22.220 I would say Afghanistan, Russia, then China.

01:02:25.700 I'm worried about Iran as well.

01:02:28.260 We are on the cusp, it appears, of signing a piece of paper that will prove worthless in making sure that Iran doesn't end up with a nuclear weapon.

01:02:36.800 And we worked really hard and made progress at denying them the wealth and resources they need to build out a nuclear weapons program.

01:02:44.340 It looks like we're about to hand them five, seven, ten billion dollars with which to conduct terror campaigns around the world.

01:02:50.880 And this axis of partners from Russia to China to Iran and North Korea is real in their disdain for the West.

01:02:58.780 It is real in their belief that America and the West are in decline and to see to see Putin make this kind of advance without real cost imposed on him does run the risk of a series, a cascading series of problems to protect American interests.

01:03:12.880 And that they'll come out and they'll celebrate that document and tell us that it's made America more safe and that Iran is abandoning its hopes for a nuclear weapon.

01:03:20.060 And it will be just as true as it's ever been, which is not at all, right?

01:03:23.860 That's why you guys abandon it.

01:03:25.300 Can I ask you about actual help to Ukraine for now?

01:03:28.780 Because former CIA guy who we've had on the show, he sent out a message saying as follows.

01:03:33.760 Sanctions won't be enough.

01:03:34.880 Covert action and the overall initiation of irregular warfare via the U.S. Intelligence Committee and SOF.

01:03:41.760 What is SOF?

01:03:44.020 Special Operating Forces.

01:03:45.540 Special Forces.

01:03:46.280 OK.

01:03:46.700 To train, equip, advise and assist Ukrainian forces must now be our focus.

01:03:52.440 He says this sounds harsh, but the key is to send home in body bags Russia's invading forces.

01:03:58.280 What about that?

01:03:59.040 The use of our Intelligence Committee or special forces to go into Ukraine and provide more hand-to-hand support.

01:04:06.760 We have real capabilities and we need to impose real costs on Vladimir Putin.

01:04:11.020 I have to be a little careful making about the things I speak about, but make no mistake about it.

01:04:17.380 We should provide weapon systems to the resistance inside of Ukraine.

01:04:22.020 If it turns out that Zelenskyy has to flee the country and set up a government somewhere else in Poland or someplace else in Europe, we should support that government.

01:04:30.100 We shouldn't recognize whatever scumbag Vladimir Putin puts and installs in Kiev.

01:04:35.160 We should make sure that that government is under pressure every day and always we know how to do these things.

01:04:41.400 And so, yes, all the tools that America has in its kit bag ought to be used to impose real costs, real costs on the person who was the aggressor and who's already killed Ukrainians.

01:04:52.060 I have a friend there named Father Oleg who's in Ukraine.

01:04:56.220 He's in the Orthodox Church, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church.

01:04:59.660 He runs a military hospital in Kiev.

01:05:02.000 He's already had soldiers coming back, some of whom have passed away.

01:05:06.720 These are noble, worthy fighters.

01:05:08.260 We ought to provide them the tools, assistance, intelligence that they need to continue this resistance as long as Vladimir Putin has wrongly taken over that country.

01:05:17.620 There's a call now from the army in Ukraine calling on reservists and anyone who can hold a weapon, anyone who can hold a weapon to attack.

01:05:28.380 I mean, realistically, what's going to happen here?

01:05:30.600 They're outmanned.

01:05:32.480 They're outmatched.

01:05:33.420 The international community is not going to create a no-fly zone, as Zelensky's begging for.

01:05:41.520 So what's likely to happen and how quickly?

01:05:44.460 Well, the Russians have overwhelming capacity, and they've been stacking it up since at least October along the border.

01:05:54.100 And this is a deep assault with all the reinforcements and supplies and supply chain that are needed.

01:05:59.060 I'm convinced that the Ukrainians will fight.

01:06:01.080 They will impose real costs.

01:06:02.260 But it could well be the case that the Russians, in a matter of days, might well come to have at least cut off significant pieces of the Ukrainians' military capacity to reinforce the capital city.

01:06:14.200 Occupation is hard, Megan.

01:06:15.620 We should make it harder.

01:06:17.720 What about NATO?

01:06:18.740 I got to ask you, because the Supreme Allied Commander, Admiral James Javridis, he came out and said, we are fully activating NATO response forces, 30,000 troops.

01:06:29.600 We're going to flood them forward to the borders of the alliance.

01:06:32.600 He says, if you are waking up in Europe this morning, you want to be in NATO.

01:06:37.460 I mean, tell it to Ukraine.

01:06:38.900 He says, Putin is going to look powerful as he rolls over for a third time, a very weak neighbor.

01:06:44.900 But the alliance outnumbers him three or four to one.

01:06:48.000 He's not going to try to cross a NATO border in anger.

01:06:51.480 So what do you take from that message?

01:06:54.280 Well, it's a good message.

01:06:55.960 But words are one thing.

01:06:57.780 Actions are another, Megan.

01:06:58.860 We certainly have seen this in these past months.

01:07:02.640 Look, Secretary General Stoltenberg, the NATO commander, is a good, decent man.

01:07:07.820 He's got a fractious coalition.

01:07:10.120 You will have NATO countries that want to do less and others who are demanding that they do more.

01:07:14.760 I hope that he can bring them together.

01:07:16.780 I think it makes excellent sense to move those NATO forces forward, to move them to the Baltic states.

01:07:21.520 The next most likely target for Vladimir would be to go into Estonia or Latvia or Lithuania.

01:07:27.780 So I think the statement he made is a good one.

01:07:31.240 The next thing we would need to see is that not only are they moving those forces to the right places to protect and defend NATO,

01:07:37.240 but they are providing them with the tools that they need, all the support to maintain that.

01:07:41.340 So they're not just putting them there for a week or an hour or a month, but they are making clear to Vladimir Putin that we understand that he has a long term plan and that the West,

01:07:49.980 those of us who are civilized and decent and don't conduct wars of aggression, that we have a long term plan as well.

01:07:55.300 It's unbelievable to think about these innocent Ukrainians just sitting there trying to grab guns.

01:08:01.060 And if they happen to defend themselves over what, what did they do?

01:08:03.860 Absolutely nothing.

01:08:05.040 They didn't like Putin.

01:08:06.220 That's the problem.

01:08:07.020 They weren't cozy enough.

01:08:08.620 The Ukrainians toward Putin, they they they don't want anything to do with him.

01:08:12.280 That's their real sin.

01:08:13.440 And that's what he's doing and trying to recapture them as in an attempt to reclaim some sort of Soviet glory, which may exist only in his own mind.

01:08:22.840 Meanwhile, his chief sort of press officer slash chief of staff, Dmitry Peskov, is out there saying Ukraine needs to be freed of Nazis.

01:08:32.420 We need to cleanse it of Nazis.

01:08:34.300 That's the kind of propaganda they're offering to the Russian people who, according to the reports, are either totally in favor of Vladimir Putin or concerned because they got a lot of relatives in Ukraine and they don't see it as an enemy.

01:08:46.040 They don't see it as something to be conquered.

01:08:48.220 I don't know.

01:08:48.860 I'll give you the last word as we await President Biden on what the American people should be going to bed thinking about tonight.

01:08:54.820 Megan, that my final thought is along those same lines, I'm praying for the Ukrainian people, the women, the children, those that are fighting against this Russian aggression.

01:09:04.300 I pray that they are successful and that we get a good outcome.

01:09:08.580 I also pray for resolve from America's leaders.

01:09:11.160 I want America's leadership to be successful.

01:09:13.240 If we can get back on our front foot, if we can begin to truly impose costs so that Vladimir Putin has to see them and feel them and the people of Russia can feel them and the leaders around him can feel it, then we have a chance of turning the tide.

01:09:24.800 If not, I fear that we're in for an awfully long struggle.

01:09:29.200 Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, always a pleasure.

01:09:31.860 Thank you for being here.

01:09:32.500 Thank you, Megan.

01:09:34.300 Thank you.

01:10:04.300 Block Russia from SWIFT.

01:10:07.360 I beg you, please save our people.

01:10:11.520 Another dozen of people and maybe hundreds of people might be murdered tonight.

01:10:18.120 Oh, my God.

01:10:19.660 My next guest just wrote a gut-wrenching account of what's happening on the ground in Ukraine.

01:10:26.180 Natalia Umenok is a Ukrainian journalist and war correspondent.

01:10:30.100 Natalia, thank you for joining us.

01:10:31.600 And I'm sure you can relate to her emotion.

01:10:35.000 Sure, of course, because it's difficult not to be emotional.

01:10:39.440 And, you know, we can describe a lot of what's happening.

01:10:42.360 We are also asked what the world can do.

01:10:44.920 And there are some things.

01:10:46.460 So at the moment when already for more than 16 hours almost, the Ukrainian army is really trying to deter this incredible, formidable force, you know, which we couldn't even imagine in any other conflict of our generation.

01:11:02.660 That's what Ukraine face if there are any, you know, emergency things which could be done by the West.

01:11:09.640 If we speak about this SWIFT thing or imposing no-flight zone, of course, that feels like that's something which still could be done.

01:11:20.320 The no-fly zone.

01:11:21.160 And yet most of the analysts over here who know what they're talking about say that's not going to happen, that the United States and that its European allies would not be prepared to go that far.

01:11:33.640 That would be, you know, what should I say?

01:11:36.500 I was, again, I was asked for a lot of time today by the Western colleagues, what should we do?

01:11:42.540 And we are saying, but also, as we understand, for a long time, Ukraine was kind of warned on there would be some imminent attack.

01:11:50.860 So there was some hope that, you know, the plans should be in place.

01:11:55.280 Because as we understand, there was no any will of Ukrainian state to fight this war.

01:12:01.480 It was all about the defense.

01:12:02.960 The Ukrainian president was addressing the Russian citizens, by the way, he does it still.

01:12:08.020 So in this way, if not, we have two options, you know, they're going together.

01:12:13.800 But indeed, I want to add that despite everything, for all these hours, many hours, there are the fighting going on all over the country by the regular Ukrainian armed forces in order to deter, you know, the Russian troops, which are coming all over.

01:12:31.800 You know, there are 2,000 kilometers long border with Russia.

01:12:37.540 There are the platoons deployed in the south, in the east, in the west.

01:12:42.280 But of course, what we understood that almost all major towns were in that way hit, not really civilians areas, but there are civilian casualties.

01:12:52.240 But as we understand, Russia kind of as a former Soviet state, Ukraine is also a former Soviet state, knows kind of the maps where the military objects, warehouses, you know, airfields, or, you know, even like military units.

01:13:09.400 So that's where they target. And I also should say that quite a lot of like Westerners were skepticism, whether Ukraine could stand even for a couple of hours.

01:13:19.260 So I do think at this moment we're coming to the night here that would be, you know, we're splitting, spilling to the second day.

01:13:25.480 But I do think that, you know, like Ukraine is buying this time still to deter, still to protect its population.

01:13:33.600 Hmm. What tell us what you're hearing with respect to your relatives in Ukraine and their experience of airstrikes or seeking shelter or friends that you've talked to.

01:13:44.140 So, you know, as I just said, people should imagine in the U.S. that Ukraine is as large as France.

01:13:51.040 You know, it's populated. We're living in the megapolisis.

01:13:54.840 It's not that easy to overtake a megapolisis, even like with, you know, troops which which are deployed.

01:14:00.960 However, it's it's possible to, you know, damage and hurt.

01:14:06.900 We lived for many years, especially in the you know, most of the Ukraine, apart from the where conflict was fought in a quite a usual Western way, in that way that your audience lives today.

01:14:18.060 So for everybody, it's shock. You know, despite the war is there, despite of the warning, you still couldn't imagine that scale of the attack because it's it's really unthinkable from the human point of view, from the historical point of view.

01:14:30.960 I may be kind of moving a bit from the personal moment, but I really want to say that, like following all the other wars, it's way bigger.

01:14:39.760 You know, it's way which we had in our generation. So the people thought they could, you know, go to the west of the country.

01:14:47.120 There are, you know, welcome by their relatives, by friends. But, you know, there were not just really traffic jams at the moment when it was really clear that Russia is targeting, you know, like not just capital, which they probably want to want to overtake.

01:15:04.340 Would it be safe to travel? Of course, Ukrainian rail will works. Airlines, of course, not. But the railway works. The roads are there.

01:15:12.460 So people thought, like, should we just wait for these days to be safe?

01:15:17.600 And in this regard, also, people, they're not calm, they're afraid, but they keep some dignity in how do they respond.

01:15:28.180 They, you know, everybody who is active trying to do something, you know, active.

01:15:32.660 And of course, people try to care about their kids, elderly, you know, parents.

01:15:38.200 So they were asked to stay at home, maybe go to shelters, you know, under the houses, in the basements of the houses.

01:15:48.260 So that's where we are. But the electricity, the water or like mobile connection, it still works.

01:15:55.620 It's also not the miracle. It's also like the part of the, you know, state is trying to, you know, to make it possible.

01:16:02.660 Yeah, that's right, because that would ensure real panic if the electricity went out and the ability to get water and so on went out.

01:16:10.000 The I understand your husband, you're a war correspondent, so you've been through something like this before.

01:16:14.800 Your husband, I'm told you had a little talk with him about not not going on the balcony and how to protect oneself.

01:16:22.760 I'm told he took a trip this morning to get to get something that would keep keep you guys safe.

01:16:28.160 Yeah, we are both journalists. And so for us, it's, you know, how to say it, we I can't say easy, but I think that's this sense of purpose is there because I think I would be really mad, you know, like just to be there and read the news.

01:16:44.860 We still, you know, figure out what is the most important.

01:16:49.860 My husband is Russian. He works for independent Russian media.

01:16:53.860 And, you know, it's also quite a important work to convey the message for the Russian citizens, which also so for the whole day we are kind of we receiving, you know, this request for forgiveness and for, you know, how ashamed a lot of people in Russia feels.

01:17:14.420 But Ukrainian president who was who is actually a very famous actor and persona well known across Russia, he addressed the Russian citizens and Russians, the Russian residents yesterday in Russia, you know, like do something.

01:17:30.420 He's still in his meetings, which which has like almost every hour he speaks.

01:17:35.000 He tried to say, like, go to the streets. But no, it's you know, it's hardly possible if you speak about Russia.

01:17:39.420 Hmm. He his message, unlike the bizarre rant we got from Vladimir Putin about how Ukraine's basically part of Russia and always has been.

01:17:49.180 And if you want to throw down, then he's going to throw down. He's I mean, it's just he went on.

01:17:53.380 But Zelensky's message was very different to the American people.

01:17:56.540 Sorry, to the Ukrainian people saying, I want to address all citizens of Russia.

01:17:59.780 We are separated by more than 2000 kilometers of mutual borders, along which 200000 of your soldiers and 100 and 1000 armored vehicles are standing.

01:18:09.840 Your leadership has approved their step forward onto the territory of another country.

01:18:13.820 The step could become the beginning of a big war.

01:18:16.660 This could cause at any moment, any provocation, a spark, a spark that could burn everything down.

01:18:22.420 You're told this flame will liberate the people of Ukraine, but the Ukrainian people are free.

01:18:26.780 You are told we hate Russian culture. How can one hate a culture?

01:18:30.840 Neighbors always enrich each other culturally.

01:18:33.420 However, that doesn't make them a single whole. It doesn't dissolve us into you.

01:18:37.080 We're different. But that's not a reason to be enemies.

01:18:39.920 He says, listen to the voice of reason. The people of Ukraine want peace.

01:18:43.600 The authorities in Ukraine want peace and they're doing everything they can for it.

01:18:48.440 We don't need war, but we will defend ourselves.

01:18:51.160 We won't attack, but defend ourselves. By attacking, you will see our faces, not our backs, our faces.

01:18:58.720 Oh, the problem is the Russian people won't hear that, will they, Natalia? They won't see it.

01:19:05.760 So, and he said that probably they won't, but there are the reasonable people who would.

01:19:10.280 But again, it may be sounded unavoidable and, you know, not something you can move.

01:19:16.060 But I do think this address is also have a very more strong moral, has very strong moral stance for the world.

01:19:25.420 Understanding that indeed this conflict is absolutely black and white and there is no any reason to attack Ukraine.

01:19:32.120 There is no real pretext. There is this madness of Vladimir Putin and also being in touch.

01:19:38.340 I'm working with the topic for so many years.

01:19:40.860 So I even talked to some people who some time ago were close to the Russian government.

01:19:46.220 They are not there and they feel the shame.

01:19:48.700 And they say, I said, like, what is the reason?

01:19:50.620 And they said, like, he's crazy. We can't say he just hate Ukraine with the reason because it's different, because it's democratic.

01:19:56.620 It's exactly what he doesn't want Russia to be.

01:19:59.800 And there is this huge country just nearby, which showed that pluralism is possible, where democracy is possible.

01:20:06.840 And this also strange, you know, that's also very difficult to add because we hoped, and I think a lot of people hope,

01:20:16.000 that there are those pragmatists in the Kremlin who would say, OK, this ruins economy.

01:20:21.100 This would ruin, you know, everything we have, the peace we have in the globe.

01:20:25.520 But we see that such decisions are driven by the people who just, you know, hate the other people.

01:20:33.460 But honestly, it's very odd for me to say that.

01:20:37.360 And I talk to you talking to a lot of people now.

01:20:40.880 You know, the only thing it feels sometimes that the only thing which in fact works,

01:20:44.840 these are those javelins, which the anti-air defense missiles, which were, you know, given to Ukraine,

01:20:52.080 because we see that, you know, though Ukraine is a smaller army, but it, as I said earlier,

01:20:58.780 it deters to as long as possible the Russian army.

01:21:05.200 And the Ukrainians' idea is to really to show that it's not, it should be unconquerable for Russia.

01:21:13.800 It should be the case when they can't occupy it.

01:21:18.100 But of course, the life should be changed.

01:21:21.260 It should be saved before we get to that stage.

01:21:24.980 What, I mean, you know the Ukrainian people.

01:21:27.140 What would happen if Vladimir Putin exercise, if he gains control over Ukraine and not just the military sites,

01:21:35.440 but over Ukraine and installs a new president, somebody who's loyal to him,

01:21:41.160 what will, how will the Ukrainian people react?

01:21:44.480 So, first of all, you know, Ukrainians as ever, society is diverse.

01:21:49.460 And a couple of months ago, I would say there would be ugly political battles

01:21:52.780 and Russia always wants to divide and conquer.

01:21:56.660 The country is absolutely united at the moment.

01:22:00.060 The villainous to resist is growing.

01:22:03.320 Even before this attack, when it was not that clear, you know,

01:22:06.880 we have beyond the 50% of the Ukrainians ready to defend it with the, you know, with the arms.

01:22:13.420 We understand there are people who won't, you know, elderly or, you know, too young or kids.

01:22:19.060 But every active person tries to do these things.

01:22:22.380 And even today shows, again, that the firefighters are working, the hospitals are working,

01:22:29.080 the bank workers trying to do something, the political opponents who really, as I said, fought ugly battles.

01:22:38.280 They are together.

01:22:39.660 And the army, it's there supporting the army.

01:22:42.380 And also probably should say it's not yet the guerrilla army.

01:22:45.300 It's a legit Ukrainian military.

01:22:48.920 Within the last days, there was a day when, you know, after this speech of Vladimir Putin,

01:22:54.620 within one day, Ukrainians gathered 700 southern U.S. dollars to donate to the organization

01:23:00.880 which gives support for the Ukrainian army.

01:23:05.000 And now, at this day, people should care about themselves and their families.

01:23:08.440 But I also think that even like the government addressed to the people, people care about themselves.

01:23:15.880 Just also to understand it's their job, your citizens, and every citizen does what they need.

01:23:22.380 Using force could be very deadly.

01:23:24.320 We don't know how some people would react.

01:23:25.980 But an option that could be some, any, you know, any person whom they would impose and that it would be doable can be seen.

01:23:37.180 But the price could be very, very high.

01:23:40.520 Right now, you say that the president has advised people to stay inside, to go downstairs into basements and so on.

01:23:46.940 But is that, as far as you understand, the current status of most of the folks in Ukraine?

01:23:52.000 I mean, schools, I imagine, are closed, businesses closed.

01:23:55.120 Walk us through what it's like on the streets and in the civilian areas, which you say are not being targeted yet.

01:24:00.600 So, in the morning, of course, it was calm as usual.

01:24:05.500 Some services didn't work.

01:24:07.560 People went to stores.

01:24:09.840 What I understand in different towns, you know, there are less people on the street.

01:24:15.680 There was imposed curfew for the first time in our history, honestly.

01:24:21.580 And, you know, it's a difficult decision.

01:24:24.040 I don't think that any country also of this size would be ready to prepare for something like that when all of its territory is attacked by, you know, by a mighty force.

01:24:36.820 You know, like you can't have that many basements.

01:24:38.800 You can't have that many.

01:24:39.900 It's just the situation itself is not normal.

01:24:42.780 So, people do stay at home.

01:24:44.600 They're watching news.

01:24:45.900 They, you know, are trying to plan these things.

01:24:49.180 Unfortunately, I should admit there are cases, there are civilian casualties where a strike hit a civilian, a residential building.

01:24:58.040 And people are afraid.

01:24:59.220 But I should say, being afraid, being scared of what we're living through, it doesn't mean people panic because, you know, it gives some hope.

01:25:10.620 You know, there is some stoicism in what is going on.

01:25:14.120 There is, I should tell the audience that we're two minutes now from hearing from President Joe Biden.

01:25:19.420 We've been given the two-minute warning before our president speaks to the latest response to what's happening in Ukraine.

01:25:25.280 There's an article in the National Review over here, a popular right-leaning publication written by a former Marine, Mark Antonio Wright, who had the following thoughts.

01:25:36.200 Natalia, he writes,

01:25:36.980 And by God, that's more important than the price that Americans will pay at the pump.

01:26:03.240 There are more important things than our pocketbooks.

01:26:05.360 Pray for all the young men at the front, young men who will soon face the fury of modern mechanized combat, young men with families and loved ones at home, young men who only wish to defend their country and, if possible, make it home alive.

01:26:20.280 And pray for all the civilians who will, over the next days and weeks, get caught in the crossfire.

01:26:25.500 To the Kremlin, they are not people or even names or numbers.

01:26:28.960 Shame on us if we treat them that way.

01:26:30.700 Vladimir Putin has unleashed this horror, but he won't be the one to pay its most tragic price.

01:26:39.380 Our thoughts are with you and your countrymen today.

01:26:42.440 Thank you so much, Natalia.

01:26:44.180 All the best.

01:26:44.780 We'll stay in touch.

01:26:45.680 And now, President Joe Biden, taking to the lectern with the very latest.

01:26:49.500 This is a premeditated attack.

01:26:53.920 Vladimir Putin has been planning this for months, as we've been saying all along.

01:26:58.560 He moved more than 175,000 troops, military equipment and positions along the Ukrainian border.

01:27:06.160 He moved blood supplies into position and built a field hospital, which tells you all you need to know about his intentions all along.

01:27:14.900 He rejected every good faith effort the United States and our allies and partners made to address our mutual security concerns through dialogue, to avoid needless conflict and avert human suffering.

01:27:28.000 For weeks, for weeks, we have been warning that this would happen.

01:27:33.500 And now, it's unfolding largely as we predicted.

01:27:36.680 In the past week, we've seen shelling increase in the Donbass, a region in eastern Ukraine controlled by Russian-backed separatists.

01:27:46.000 The Russian government has perpetrated cyberattacks against Ukraine.

01:27:51.740 We saw a staged political theater in Moscow, outlandish and baseless claims that Ukraine was about to invade and launch a war against Russia.

01:28:03.520 We saw a flagrant violation of international law in attempting to unilaterally create two new so-called republics on sovereign Ukrainian territory.

01:28:22.920 And at the very moment that the United Nations Security Council was meeting to stand up for Ukraine's sovereignty, to stave off invasion, Putin declared his war.

01:28:35.120 Within moments, moments, missile strikes began to fall on historic cities across Ukraine.

01:28:41.580 Then came the air raids, followed by tanks and troops rolling in.

01:28:45.960 We've been transparent with the world.

01:28:49.780 We've shared declassified evidence about Russia's plans and cyberattacks and false pretexts so that there could be no confusion or cover-up about what Putin was doing.

01:29:00.640 Putin is the aggressor.

01:29:03.700 Putin chose this war.

01:29:06.040 And now, he and his country will bear the consequences.

01:29:08.740 Today, I'm authorizing additional strong sanctions and new limitations on what can be exported to Russia.

01:29:17.960 This is going to impose severe costs on the Russian economy, both immediately and over time.

01:29:23.900 We have purposely designed these sanctions to maximize the long-term impact on Russia and to minimize the impact on the United States and our allies.

01:29:33.520 And I want to be clear.

01:29:35.260 The United States is not doing this alone.

01:29:37.680 For months, we've been building a coalition of partners representing well more than half the global economy.

01:29:46.080 Twenty-seven members of the European Union, including France, Germany, Italy, as well as the United Kingdom, Canada, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, and many others, to amplify the joint impact of our response.

01:29:58.640 I just spoke with the G7 leaders this morning, and we're in full and total agreement.

01:30:03.700 We will limit Russia's ability to do business in dollars, euros, pounds, and yen to be part of the global economy.

01:30:12.900 We'll limit their ability to do that.

01:30:15.380 We're going to stunt the ability to finance and grow the Russian military.

01:30:20.300 We're going to impose major, and we're going to impair their ability to compete in high-tech 21st-century economy.

01:30:28.100 We've already seen the impact of our actions on Russia's currency and the ruble, which early today hit its weakest level ever, ever in history.

01:30:38.900 Russia's stock market plunged today.

01:30:41.300 The Russian government's borrowing rates spiked by over 15%.

01:30:45.980 In today's actions, we've now sanctioned Russian banks that together hold around $1 trillion in assets.

01:30:54.500 We've cut off Russia's largest bank, a bank that holds more than one-third of Russia's banking assets by itself, cut it off from the U.S. financial system.

01:31:03.920 And today, we're also blocking four more major banks.

01:31:08.660 That means every asset they have in America will be frozen.

01:31:13.080 This includes VTB, the second-largest bank in Russia, which has $250 billion in assets.

01:31:21.740 As promised, we're also adding the names to the list of Russian elites and their family members that were sanctioned as well.

01:31:30.200 As I said on Tuesday, these are people who personally gained from the Kremlin's policies, and they should share in the pain.

01:31:38.760 We will keep up this drumbeat of those designations against corrupt billionaires in the days ahead.

01:31:45.980 On Tuesday, we stopped the Russian government from raising money from U.S. or European investors.

01:31:51.880 Now, we're going to apply the same restrictions to Russia's largest state-owned enterprises, companies with assets that exceed $1.4 trillion.

01:32:02.840 Some of the most powerful impacts our actions will come over time, as we squeeze Russia's access to finances and technology, for strategic sectors of its economy, and degrade its industrial capacity for years to come.

01:32:16.380 Between our actions and those of our allies and partners, we estimate that we'll cut off more than half of Russia's high-tech imports.

01:32:25.000 It will strike a blow to their ability to continue to modernize their military.

01:32:29.860 It will degrade their aerospace industry, including their space program.

01:32:34.500 It will hurt their ability to build ships, reducing their ability to compete economically.

01:32:39.000 And it will be a major hit to Putin's long-term strategic ambitions.

01:32:44.360 And we're preparing to do more.

01:32:46.740 In addition to the economic penalties we're imposing, we're also taking steps to defend our NATO allies, particularly in the East.

01:32:55.120 Tomorrow, NATO will convene a summit.

01:32:57.880 We'll be there to bring together the leaders of 30 allied nations and close partners to affirm our solidarity.

01:33:06.060 And to map out the next steps we will take to further strengthen all aspects of our NATO alliance.

01:33:13.580 Although we provided over $650 million in defensive assistance to Ukraine just this year, it's last year, let me say it again.

01:33:23.520 Our forces are not and will not be engaged in a conflict with Russia in Ukraine.

01:33:29.220 Our forces are not going to Europe to fight in Ukraine, but to defend our NATO allies and reassure those allies in the East.

01:33:38.740 As I made crystal clear, the United States will defend every inch of NATO territory with the full force of American power.

01:33:45.900 And the good news is, NATO is more united and more determined than ever.

01:33:52.860 There is no doubt, no doubt that the United States and every NATO ally will meet our Article 5 commitments, which says an attack on one is an attack on all.

01:34:03.580 Over the past few weeks, I ordered thousands of additional forces to Germany and Poland as part of our commitment to NATO.

01:34:10.120 On Tuesday, in response to Russia's aggressive action, including its troop presence in Belarus and the Black Sea, I've authorized the deployment of ground and air forces already stationed in Europe to NATO's eastern flank allies, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Romania.

01:34:27.860 Our allies have also been stepping up, adding the other allies, the rest of NATO, adding their own forces and capabilities to ensure collective defense.

01:34:39.960 And today, within hours of Russia's unleashing its assault, NATO came together and authorized and activated an activation of response plans.

01:34:49.040 This will enable NATO's high readiness forces to deploy and when and where they are needed to protect our NATO allies on the eastern boundaries of Europe.

01:35:00.540 And now I'm authorizing additional U.S. force capabilities to deploy to Germany as part of NATO's response, including some of the U.S.-based forces that the Department of Defense placed on standby weeks ago.

01:35:12.860 I've also spoken with Defense Secretary Austin and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Milley, about preparations for additional moves should they become necessary to protect our NATO allies and support the greatest military alliance in the history of the world, NATO.

01:35:28.820 That's going to do it for our two hours today. We'll have everything covered for you again tomorrow.

01:35:33.040 So far, what we're hearing is more sanctions, military to some NATO countries, but no boots or military assistance in Ukraine, as expected.

01:35:44.880 This from Dan Crenshaw as we close out the show.

01:35:47.160 Ukrainian government giving weapons to anyone who wants to fight. Good. Get some.

01:35:52.160 May God be with you as you fight for your freedom. We'll see you tomorrow.

01:35:58.200 Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show. No BS, no agenda and no fear.

01:36:03.040 Thank you.

The Megyn Kelly Show - February 24, 2022

Russia Invades Ukraine, with Mike Pompeo, Jim Geraghty, Konstantin Kisin, and Nataliya Gumenyuk ｜ Ep. 268

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