moving on now former cia covert operations officer michael baker is joining us live from voice idaho united states thank you so much for joining us the situation has intensified exponentially as you know russian president vladimir putin called for military operation in ukraine there have been reports of explosions in cavenharkev as per russian defense minister ukraine's air defenses are being disabled and ukraine has closed its airspace how do you assess these actions well i mean they are following a certain methodology here that that makes sense and that uh has been outlined by both the us administration and nato as the likely steps that would be taken um as this conflict increases and is should uh putin decide that he wants to uh actually uh engage in this sort of military uh adventurism and incursion so the the cyber attacks that preceded uh the missile strikes again not unexpected uh the targets for the missile strikes also not unexpected you do want to take out if you're putin and you're trying to do this in a in a very quick fashion you want to take out the uh the major infrastructure so you're taking out power grids you're taking out command and control centers you're targeting airports military facilities so all these steps do make sense what is missing is understanding of exactly what putin's endgame is here how far is he going to take this right in fact i was just going to come to that just uh one point that i need clarity on as per president putin russia cannot develop and grow with the constant threat from ukraine how do you see russia's efforts to have a hold on the security framework here do you see this conflict limited to eastern ukraine uh no no it i mean i at one point i um had imagined that what putin really was looking to do was to uh garner some wins here was to sort of you know further cement his hold on the uh don bass region in the eastern portion of ukraine uh was to uh perhaps ensure that he could get an agreement over strategic weapons placement um and a couple other without actually engaging in major military operations that you know turned out not to be the case so at this rent point it appears as if something has changed within putin's calculus and he now no longer really cares at all what uh the west or any rational thinking uh nation state uh believes uh and is just going to march on so it really is understanding what his plans and intentions are at this point that's it's a pure speculation on the part of anyone who's not vladimir putin right also how do you think the united states western allies will navigate their way out of this crisis they've constantly reiterated their support and united action in the crisis but how actually will we see the support materialize yeah that's a very important question uh and it's a very complex question but ultimately you have to ask yourself what what leverage do we have uh president biden in the u.s has already declared that uh the us will not be engaged in direct military conflict with russia he so he's taken that off the table whether we were going to do it or not i'm not sure that that strategy of telling the opposition what you're willing to do and not do is a particularly good idea so they've done that um nato i think is is proven itself for the most part to be unified here there's been some concern over germany and and germany's concern over its own energy stability uh so you know exactly what leverage do we have beyond uh increasing sanctions but one could argue that really we should have been laying on very severe sanctions once we understood months ago that putin was starting to move large numbers of troops and hardware to the border region that would have been the time to try to show real strong resolve and deterrence and to get him to back off i suspect that now sanctions aren't really going to have any impact absolutely now also this conflict in ukraine threatens to displace some 5 million people what can you tell us about the broader implications of this right well that's been one of the major concerns as you game out this where this could go has been the concern over of the refugee situation and you can imagine um you know the the millions of displaced people perhaps flowing west through the ukraine but then moving into the bordering nato countries so you have poland you have hungary uh moldova uh slovakia so you there there has been discussions have been an effort to game this out to understand how best to prepare for that possible scenario uh but typically the reality of it is always going to be worse than what you imagine when you're when replacement you're trying to game out the various potential scenarios so it's it's not going to be a particularly pretty picture if in fact putin decides he's just going to move [Music] you
Comments
Post a Comment