michael mcfall is here. he is the msnbc international affairs analyst. what is your reaction to this eye of buffer zones? >> horrific, tragic, scary. barbaric. but not surprising. i think there's been a lot of hope if we could give putin territory, he would go away. he needs to sit down and cut a deal. what putin said today is he is not going to stop until he is stopped. he speaks it plain as day. we need to listen to what he said. he will not stop killing ukrainians until he is stopped on the battlefield. >> and ukrainian president zelenskyy is calling that idea of a buffer zone an escalation. vladimir putin was reelected with 87% of the vote despite protests after opposition leader alexei navalny's death. will anything weaken putin's grip on power? >> thanks for putting the words election in quotation mark. it is a sham. we should stop calling it an election. when we do that, we are pretending it was an election. it was not. this reminds me of soviet era elections i actually attended because i'm that old. and going to this extent, 88%, it is embarrassi

joining me now is the former ambassador to russia, michael mcfall, who knows a lot about the thinkingre, i'm so grateful for you taking the time. i don't want to over crankiness, but it's important to talk about. putin didn't mention i.s.i.s. k . why did you make of putin's initial response? what was obviously a horrific attack were over 100 lives were lost. >> first, it was a horrific attack, and i want to express my condolences to all family and friends who lost loved ones, terrorism is never justified and this was a horrific terrorist attack, the biggest one in 20 years in russia. second, the thing that was very striking to me about putin's reaction is how long it took. he didn't come out right away, he took some time to figure out the way they wanted to spin it. and then when he did make his statement, just as you just reported, he didn't mention i.s.i.s. k, he didn't talk about that particular organization, which by the way, dave had troubles with for a long time, it would have been easy to explain to the russian people why that kind of terrorist group what have attacked them, bu

ambassador to russia and international affairs analyst michael mcfall. ambassador. it's good to see you, sir. explain why this vote matters. moscow has presented this election as some sort of a horse race tween putin and three other edited. the result was never in question. why does vladimir putin, who wields up the power silence virtually all the sand. why does he put on the charade that this election is free and fair. what does it say about how secure he might feel in his position as russia's leader? >> today is just a tragedy for anybody who cares about democracy. back in the 1990s, i actually started my academic career writing about competitive elections when they were competitive in russia. they are not today. this is a complete joke. i do not even like to use the word election. you asked a different question. why does he do it? i went to them. i saw them. they want to appear to have the legitimacy that democratically elect leaders and real democracies have and that's why they go through the trouble to do these things. that said, though, he fears this election.