good morning, everyone. i'm yasmin vossoughian. we have a lot to cover in the three hours ahead. thanks for joining me. so the united states and its allies are on the offensive right now. working to help ukraine deal with this ongoing invasion from

russia. secretary of state tony blinken indicating in many appearances today that they are in fact discussing the possibility of banning russian oil imports as well as poland sending fighter jets to ukraine. listen to this. >> we are now in very active discussions with our european partners about banning the import of russian oil to our countries while of course at the same time maintaining a steady global supply. >> we are looking actively now at the question of airplanes that poland may provide to ukraine and looking at how we might be able to backfill. >> so the one thing the united states and nato will not do, create a no-fly zone over the country. ukrainian president as you see here, volodymyr zelenskyy pleading once again earlier today for the no-fly zone to

deter russian bombers. but america and its allies saying it will put them in direct contact with russia, something they're not willing to do. zelenskyy also raising concerns about the possible next target for russian forces. the southern port city of odesa. then a second attempt to evacuate citizens in the besieged city of mariupol halted once again after ukraine said russia violated the cease-fire with a barrage of shelling. ukrainians across the country trying to flee, appearing to come under fire from russian forces. watch this scene earlier today.

>> completely terrifying. the town's mayor saying that at least eight civilians were killed during the shelling and in the eastern city of kharkiv, officials saying a tv tower was damaged by russian forces there. a spokesperson for the transmitting station has said their broadcast is temporarily suspended. and then companies across the spectrum limiting or banning outright their services inside russia. tiktok saying today it's going to suspend new content inside the country. adding on to the list of social media sites trying to tamp down and control misinformation. american express, mastercard, visa, also halting their business. the russian president has yet to agree to end the attacks. to end this war. we want to begin with the latest on the ground in ukraine. that's where we find nbc's matt bradley in the western city of

rivny. ukrainians now more than a week into this thing, what is the sense that you're getting from residents there who have decided to stick it out? >> yeah, i have to tell you, before we start, the lights are probably going to go out because there is a 10:00 curfew. it's 10:00 p.m. here, and people tend to turn off their lights because they don't want to have bombings overhead see what's going on down on the ground. this is happening throughout the country. but here, things are really, really quiet. it's not so much they're feeling like they're sticking it out. there have been some bombardments that have hit this sort of western-northwestern city. the thing that's really worrying for a lot of people is the belarusian border is only a two-hour drive away. and if the belarusians suddenly decide or not so suddenly decide they want to throw in their lot with the russians, they could charge right down this highway and come right through this town on their way to encircle all of kyiv, the capital. so that's a real risk here, and

it's something that intelligence assessments from the west have been telegraphing since the beginning of this conflict. so people here, they're worried, but they're also buoyed by a lot of the initial successes on the ground we have seen in the first week of that conflict. that might be changing now. but folks here seem optimist whk i was chatting with them today. >> matt, talk to me about the evacuation efforts on the ground. given, of course, reports of all of the shelling that's happening. >> yeah, it's been heartbreaking. we have seen two aborted effort said over the past twenty-two two days, one yesterday and one today. it would be hard to believe the ukrainians would be the ones breaking this cease-fire agreement and causing these civilian evacuations to cease. that would seem to be more on the side of the russians. it's the ukrainians who are

saying the russians are bombarding these humanitarian corridors, so-called as they are, because they're allowing ideally for civilians to get out of the city of mariupol and one of the villages next door. that has been suspended, and that's leaving hundreds of thousands of people trapped in cities where they have no water, no heat, no food, no electricity, no access to vital medicines. i was talking to a friend of mine just today and she was saying how her friend's grandmother is there. she only has enough medicine to last out the end of the week, so she needs to find out how to get moving, but with shelling all around the city, and again, this is a city that is surrounded, it's hard to get out, especially if you're an elderly person. yasmin. >> yeah, you bring up such a great point, that people that would essentially want to get out but don't have necessarily the means to get out, for instance, if they're sick, if they need medicine, if they're elderly, as you bring up. so what is the effort being done to help these individuals to get

them the supplies that they need, because we know obviously strategically, russian forces are honing in on utilities like knocking out electricity, knocking out communication. >> that's some of the intelligence assessments saying those are very much in the cross hairs. the idea is to force a capitulation. we have seen that again from some of these intelligence assessments. are all of the intelligence assessments correct? no, but they have been shockingly correct since the beginning of this. they have been surprisingly on the money. we can believe on some level that could be one of putin's motives. it would make things easier to force civilians to capitulate by essentially surrounding cities like kyiv, like kharkiv in the northeast, and like mariupol in the southeast. that would then create the impetus to move in for the russians and then they would have a pliant public who wouldn't be resisting their occupation. that's the real fear.

that's the real goal. it's one of the goals that's done by the constant bombardment, the shelling that we have been seeing. they have been shelling to soften the ground, in order to then move in their artillery to take over cities. again, the shelling doesn't necessarily achieve any strategic goals on their own. it destroys buildings and kills people. it doesn't actually take territory. for that, uneed an infantry. what it does do is terrify the population into submission. that's something we have seen in the russian playbook in places line chechnya in the late 90s. that's could be what we're going to see here, and unfortunately, we may see a lot more of that. >> matt bradley for us, thank you. i'm going to talk to you again at the top of the next hour. >> want to bring in anastasia radnia, a member of the ukraine parliament and head of the anti-corruption committee. thank you for joining us. we appreciate it. talk to me about how you're doing. >> i don't think anyone in

ukraine can say they are fine or safe or not heartbroken at the news that you're now showing. i will say we are committed to fight but utterly heartbroken. >> utterly heartbroken. i want to read for people a tweet that you put out there. saying this, today, russia violated cease-fire agreement and shelled green corridors in mariupol, but it's much worse. at least 515,000 from about 150 uae communities are cut from delivery of life-saving goods because of russian forces. you go on. their lives depend on ua receiving air defense, fighter jets, and everything possible to protect our sky and secure green corridors. we know, obviously, your president is asking for this no-fly zone. the west as well as nato forces as well as eu have said that is not possible. they don't want to have a direct

confrontation with russian forces. that could feasibly begin a world war iii. instead, it seems there is a negotiation in which poland would give fighter jets then to be backe filled by the united states. is this enough? would this help? >> yes, this would help a lot. and we hope and pray that this agreement comes into force as soon as possible because literally, we do not have any, any basically time to delay because the human cost of russian unprovoked aggression against ukraine is already unimaginable. we already know that more than 205,000 people are killed and these are not final numbers. these numbers will grow as rescue teams still do not have access to many places of heavy shelling and bombing. so we can say that every day of

delaying this very necessary and ardent assistant to protect ukrainians can cause the life of as much as three kids. basically what we do is we urge the west to act as soon as possible. not in days of discussion, but today, tomorrow, in order to protect ukrainian sky and protect innocent civilian lives before ukraine repeats the scenario that russians did in syria, for example. >> did you ever imagine you would be in a situation like this? >> of course not. >> how scared are you to be there? >> i can't even describe this pain, as a mother, as a human, i think that's just, i mean, unbearable. i would say that mother of each and every ukrainian kid is scared to death basically.

waking at night with air raid sirens or being in western ukraine just opening news or hearing the air raid sirens. ukrainian mothers are scared to death. >> where are your children now? >> my children are in ukraine. my little son is now in ukraine. so i'm basically sharing the feelings all ukrainian mothers have. >> what are you telling your son about what's happening? >> luckily, he's too small to understand, but many hundreds of millions of ukrainian kids are not that small, and they do understand and feel and feel this heartbreak. and i'm sorry, i just cannot talk about this. sorry. i can't imagine having to explain to a child why they have to sleep in a shelter, why kids

as young as months and a half old are dying because they are contracting colds and they have no opportunities to get to the hospital or why kids are being killed on a road to the hospital. that's just unimaginable pain. >> anastasia, thank you so much for joining us in this incredibly difficult time. and we do hope that you stay in touch with us and remain safe wherever it is that you and your family are. thank you. all right, giving aid and comfort to more than 1.5 million ukrainian refugees. still ahead, the challenges to help so many outside that war-torn country. >> how are you feeling right now? >> not really. i'm scared. like, my country, my town, all my friends, and my friends are sleeping in parking or something

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i'm a deputy mayor of a small village, 2,004 kilometers away. i sent home today a family with two children. i sent home a family on saturday, five-member family,

father, mother, and three children. you can imagine that here, mothers are coming with children because the man has to fight, and they are not allowed to escape or flee the country. they came on the green border. they showed me pictures about their city and about their street. they don't have house anymore. it has been bombed. i send them to my village. and i received the photo in the evening that the 3-year-old children is laying on the bed, he's already sleeping with a toy. and i started to cry. of course, yeah. people and me, i cry every day, but it was, you know, it was happy crying, or how to say, so my soul was okay that maybe they

will have some hope there. >> that was ali velshi reporting from hungary on the humanitarian crisis happening now. i want to turn to ellison barber on southeast poland near the ukrainian border. as i just mentioned, in poland, border guards there clearing 129,000 ukrainian refugees yesterday alone. nearly a million plus since the start of the war barely two weeks ago. how are they managing this huge influx? >> yeah, the numbers are mind boggling when you look at them, particularly when you look at how quickly so many people have fled. i mean, this is not something that has happened over the course of weeks or months. it is days. the government here in poland, they have one refugee welcome center, not far from here, that we visited yesterday, that they

actually started to set up early on when it looked like russia was potentially going to invade, and they had 2,000 cots placed in this area. we walked around it, and most of the cots, most of the beds, you saw multiple people sitting on them. at times it looked like families where one person was taking a turn sleeping and the other was rotating out. they had a lot of coordination there. police, firefighters, members of poland's army helping coordinate transportation. there were buses that were going from that location to other cities in poland and also to other cities in neighboring countries. but that was by far the most organized border crossing we are seen. we have been to six different border crossings, six different refugee welcome centers. and it ranges from highly, highly organized like that one i mentioned that we went to yesterday, to some that really, it's just makeshift volunteers

sort of standing around holding up signs, offering rides to strangers. the polish government, they have made a lot of efforts, taken a lot of steps to try and meet the demand here. and they have lifted a lot of the mandatory requirements for people to cross into the country. but in the big picture, long term, the amount of people that are coming here, it is so much that it is difficult for any government to keep up with on their own. you look back just a couple days ago, and there was one day where in warsaw, the government had designated about 600 beds specifically for refugees who were coming and needed to stay at least for that night. that day, they had 3500 refugees heading into warsaw needing a bed. so there's aid, there's a lot of effort here to meet the demand, but the demand is just so incredibly massive. >> we have been seeing so many

images specifically of women and children, young mothers, newborn babies having to cross the borders, becoming refugees suddenly having to leave their homes amidst this war. you actually had a moment with a young ukrainian girl a little earlier who was looking to play soccer with you. something so innocent, right? something that makes kids so happy, and it was kind of like this sign of joy in a pretty awful situation, a huge smile on her face. are they prepared to handle, to deal with this influx specifically of young children and moms? and also the psychological ramifications of it all? >> the short answer is probably not. right now, in a lot of ways, it seems like this sort of temporary stopgap measure of just dealing with things as they come right now. i had a moment walking today after playing with and meeting that little girl. we had been playing with her and

her brother kind of all morning. my entire team that i'm with here, they always are trying to interact and say hi to the kids we see because there are so many. i can't even tell you how many time yz have watched my producer, anthony, play peekaboo with someone's kid as they're crossing the border, as the parents are focused on getting them somewhere safe, because the kid is just unaware of it. it's this beautiful heartwarming and also tragic moment because you wonder when will they realize what's happened? for some, it will be pretty soon, a couple days down the road where they realize this isn't just a fun adventure. that they might not be going home for a while. i was walking and saw one woman crying facing the fence away from children, and i could hear between her crying, kids giggling. there's so much trauma here that we -- it's beyond words on how it will have to be dealt with, but there are a lot of people who not only need help right now but are going to need a lot of help in the month and years to come. that's true of any sort of

humanitarian crisis like this, be it syria, venezuela, or the one we're seeing here. yasmin. >> yeah, this war may in fact end one day, but the ramifications of this, the consequences of this will be seen for years, if not decades to come. ellison barber, thank you for your incredible reporting on that. and tell anthony thank you as well for entertaining the kids. they need it right now. joined now by representative john garamendi of california, a member of the armed services committee. congressman, once again, welcome. great to see you. you and i have been speaking throughout this conflict from beginning to middle to now. we are at this inflection point where the president of ukraine is asking for this no-fly zone. and the west, nato forces, the european union, essentially saying we just can't do it. we cannot risk coming into conflict with moscow. want to play a bit of secretary blinken responding to this. >> we're not going to put the

united states in direct conflict with russia. not have american planes flying against russian planes. or our soldiers on the ground in ukraine. just so people understand, too, what a no-fly zone means. it means if you declare a space no-fly and a russian plane flies through it, we have to shoot it down. >> we know how catastrophic a no-fly zone could feasibly be, coming into conflict with russian forces, u.s. and russian forces. that being said, it seems as if the secretary said there are negotiations happening now. if poland decides to send in fighter jets to ukraine, the united states could backfill the fighter jets to poland. it's progress, yes, but is it enough? >> well, probably not, but it's certainly going to be helpful, helpful in the short term. there are other air defense mechanisms, equipment, that might also be available beyond the use of the airplanes.

certainly, the mig fighter jets from poland. my understanding is that an agreement may very well have been reached while you and i have been waiting here for the last 20, 30 minutes. if that's the case, then those planes will probably be in the skies over ukraine very, very shortly. there's a lot that goes with bringing a very sophisticated fighter jet into the theater. you have all the maintenance issues and other assorted problems, including the armaments that go on the planes. so it may take a while. the other thing that i believe we need to look at is what are called tactical field air defense systems. these are systems that are deployed along with our army when they are in the field. so that may be another option that's available to us. the -- i'm having trouble getting over that previous interview that you did. so let's go back to the air

defense things. that young lady and the trauma that these families are facing is just plain tough. and the inability for people to get out of the danger zone, like mariupol. so what are we going to do? we're going to continue doing what we're doing. the missiles are very useful for low flying aircraft. we have seen some pictures of those russian fighter jets, bombers, flying very low. they're putting themselves at risk to those stinger missiles. there are other systems, as i said a moment ago, that might be available, and we need to look at that. so this is a very, very bad situation. putin has created an unholy god awful mess with people dying for what purpose? so his ego can be obtained? go ahead, please. >> yeah, so you were speaking of my conversation with anastasia,

and it's incredibly difficult to be interviewing her from this studio and knowing that when i say good-bye to her, she has to go back to the life she's living right now, which is fear and fear of being killed by russian forces. and she said to us on the air, time is of the essence. every hour, every minute matters. so why can western forces, nato forces, european union, why can they not move quicker, if in fact these defense missiles would help? why can't you get it to them? how fast can we move considering the fact it seems like putin has no end game in sight? for him, it seems like he's going for a scorched earth ukraine. >> it does appear that way. and kyiv is next on the list. i am certain of that, odesa probably and then kyiv. so what to do here. i can assure you that the

american government and the department of defense are thinking through every conceivable option to provide air cover without the united states being directly involved. there are many different ways that might be achieved, certainly the polish mig jet fighters is one way that is likely to be achieved in the very near term. you just had a picture of i think that's a javelin, but those armaments are very useful for certain situations. but for the high-flying aircraft, they are not. the other thing that may be useful is a question for the ukrainian military and how they might be able to protect those exit roads out of these cities. but that's probably going to take more equipment. i will tell you that the

equipment that is planned for ukraine is entering ukraine on a very steady daily, hourly basis. we're not able to talk about where and how, but nonetheless, it is happening. with regard to the no-fly zone, apparently an agreement has been reached with poland. those aircraft will presumably very shortly be available, with the other romania and bulgaria also in line to have their aircraft available to ukraine. the good news is that these aircraft are the ones in which the ukrainian air force is trained to operate. they're familiar with those planes. so it is a complex situation to bring aircraft into a conflict zone. >> absolutely. >> all of the maintenance, refueling and the like, that has to be worked out.

>> all right, congressman, as always, we appreciate you joining us this hour. we'll be right back. so subway's upping their avocado game. (refresh!) we're talking just two great ingredients. perfectly ripe, hand-scooped hass avocados and a touch of sea salt. two great ingredients to make one very hungry announcer. subway keeps refreshing and refreshing and re-

welcome back, everybody. more than 1.5 million people have fled ukraine since the invasion began. at least 500,000 of them, the united states estimates, are kids. evacuation routes for refugees are at risk of being blocked or in fact destroyed across the country because of shelling and bombings by russian forces that show no signs of stopping. just this morning, ukrainian officials confirmed that eight russian missiles struck the city of vinnytsia in what was called a brutal and critical strike. i'm joined by joel reuben. it's good to talk to you once again. thank you for joining us. i have been thinking a lot about something. it was the president's

declaration that in fact troops will not go into ukraine no matter what. and i'm not saying that that wasn't necessarily the right decision. what i am saying is, was that the right strategic message to send to vladimir putin, to take that option completely off the table? >> yasmin, it's great to be with you. and this is the nightmare scenario that we're watching right now unfold. the nightmare of having an unfettered autocrat not accountable to his own people, using nuclear weapons, threatening nuclear weapons as a back-up to his aggression with unmitigating bombing. yes, i do think president biden was right to take that off the table because we could see very clearly how quickly this could escalate into a nightmare becoming reality. where nuclear discharge occurs. and i think for president biden, he made it clear to vladimir

putin there would be real pain and real cost. and putin acknowledged that just the other day. he said that the american sanctions, the global sanctions are an act of aggression towards russia. he's feeling the pain. russia's diplomatically isolated. our allies and are unified and they might not have been if president biden hadn't said that. this unity is crucial to protecting the countries that are alongside this conflict zone. make no mistake about it, vladimir putin is literally engaging in the nightmare scenario that everyone has always been concerned about the national security community of a nuclear weaponized state aggressively attacking without any controls. >> active aggression, yes, when it comes to the sanctions. vladimir putin saying that. but will they make him back off? are they going to be effective in de-escalating this situation? >> the fear is quite frankly not yet. and that there is going to need

to be more pain inflicted on vladimir putin and on the russian regime from these sanctions. there's going to have to be a ramping up of sanctions most likely and more punishment economically. there's going to have to be more military supply going into ukrainian army, as you have been discussing. and it's going to need to continue to grow in pain for vladimir putin. while there are also off ramps. this is hard but this is part of the process. volodymyr zelenskyy, the president of ukraine, has said it. he has to talk to putin to end this madness. so we have to follow his lead at the core level in figuring out diplomatic off ramps, but the pain matters now, and that pain, that impact, that pressure in the service of some kind of outcome, that is what's necessary. it looks like putin still wants to do more and needs to feel more pressure to stop.

>> joel reuben, as always, we thank you, former deputy assistant secretary of state. good to see you. >> still ahead, what you're not seeing inside ukraine right now. i'm going to talk with an american reporter on the ground in that country. (vo) right now, the big switch is happening across the country. small businesses are fed up with big bills and 5g maps that are mostly gaps— they're switching to t-mobile for business and getting more 5g bars in more places. save over $1,000 when you switch to our ultimate business plan... ...for the lowest price ever. plus, choose from the latest 5g smartphones— like a free samsung galaxy s22. so switch to the network that helps your business do more for less—join the big switch to t-mobile for business today. ( ♪♪ ) ( ♪♪ )

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okay everyone, our mission is to provide complete balanced nutrition for strength and energy. woo hoo! ensure, complete balanced nutrition with 27 vitamins and minerals. and ensure complete with 30 grams of protein. ♪ ♪ welcome back, everybody. reporting from a war zone, that is the assignment for journalists on the ground in ukraine. my next guest is one of those reporters, "washington post" correspondent at large, whose latest reporting paints a devastating picture of the human toll of russia's invasion. and he is joining me now. i want to read for people this account that you gave of a woman burying her husband. a psychologist. the priest began the funeral under the ornately painted domed church ceiling dressed in a long cream robe.

his melodic prayers echoed off the walls, as the mourners held candles. the sounds of more shells vibrated through the walls. she clutched her husband's portrait, tears welling in her eyes, mourners kissed her husband's forehead one by one. they carried out his coffin, placed it back in the van, and drove to the site of this grave. near that grave site were pieces of the rockets that had fallen the day before. as the coffin was placed in the grave, mother and son stood together, trying to fight back the tears. this is an incredibly devastating picture of what is taking place, it seems, all across the country right now. that you're witnessing. >> yeah. i mean, it is devastating. what we're really seeing here is the war has gotten so -- is affecting so many people that even simple things like giving birth to a baby or burying the

dead has become an incredible challenge. this particular woman, oksana, her husband was killed in a gun battle several days ago. and it took her several days just to get the death certificate and autopsy done because the bodies at the morgue were piling up because of the war. on top of that, she tried to bury her husband on thursday, and when she went to the burial site, the area got rained with rockets from the russians who were just a few miles away. so she tried again on friday. last friday, and this time, she was determined to bury her husband. despite the outgoing shellings that was going on throughout the ceremony. she didn't care. she wanted to pay -- give the last rites to her husband. >> and there's a funeral director who actually told you

some people are just so scared to bury their loved ones. they're keeping them inside their homes because of the constant shelling and the war that's happening outside their houses. >> that's right. the war is intensifying. just today, we saw scores of people fleeing a bridge out of a neighborhood, like a satellite town many here consider a suburb, but people literally fleeing, and there were images of them being literally targeted by russian shells. they were dodging them and running, and some actually died today. so yeah, it's a very scary portrait, and people are -- as the funeral director said, they are keeping the dead in their home, afraid to bury them. others are in underground shelters spending most of their days underneath. some are giving birth to babies in hospitals that are

underground. it's an extremely desperate situation that is getting more desperate day by day. >> and you reported from a scene in which six people died, two of which were children, indiscriminately killing children, which is just so incredibly heartbreaking. any loss of life is awful, but a child. >> yes. >> and it seems so indiscriminate. >> sure. absolutely. and this incident happened in a village about six miles southwest of the capital. and it was just a small idyllic village with no military bases nearby, no government buildings. and yet on friday, in the afternoon, this family's house is obliterated by an air strike as well as surrounding houses. a 12-year-old girl, disabled girl, was among the dead. and when i went to visit the family over the weekend, they

were searching through the rubble, looking for any kind of documents, passport, birth certificate, so they could move on. so they can move away, perhaps even out of the country. so there was an extremely, as i said, desperate and dire situation. >> on the ground in ukraine, your reporting is so incredibly important, and we thank you for being there. please stay safe. still ahead, everybody. sanctions from multiple countries have yet to stop russia's attacks on ukraine. so what will stop them? we're going to talk about what the west may need to offer the kremlin instead. we'll be right back. i see inspiration right through my glass. so when my windshield cracked, i chose safelite. they replaced the glass and recalibrated my safety system. that's service i can trust. >> singers: ♪ safelite repair, safelite replace. ♪

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allergies don't have to be scary. spraying flonase daily stops your body from overreacting to allergens all season long. psst! psst! flonase all good. welcome back, everybody. american express is the latest credit card giant to suspend service to russia. the company releasing a statement citing russia's ongoing unjustified attack on the people of ukraine. and then also announcing it would be terminating operations in belarus. so this is the latest of course attempt by the u.s. and its allies to use financial warfare to stop vladimir putin's invasion of ukraine. the suspensions are coming following yesterday's call between ukrainian president volodymyr zelenskyy and u.s. lawmakers. in a recent podcast episode, my next guest breaks down just how

much the west's unprecedented sanctions are hurting russia, and also how this is salt on its economy is a delicate dance with unknown consequences and a very long road ahead. listen to this. >> when a country is engaged in a significant enough behavior that a large country wants to sanction them for it, it's something they really care about. it's really important to them and they're willing to suffer a significant amount of pain in order to accomplish whatever the objective is. this is a full scale interstate war of a kind we have not seen since world war ii. and the reason you're making all these world war ii parallels in this comment is because europeans remember it really well. they do not want anything like it to happen again. they can't have a continent wide war, so there's a sense russia needs to be deterred and punished for this behavior so they don't try it again with another country on europe's eastern flank. so i think it's fear of russian expansionism more than anything else and fear of another devastating continent-wide war

motivating countries to come off the sidelines and take more aggressive actions. >> joining me now is zach, senior correspondent at vox. thanks for joining us. this was a brilliant podcast, such good information, so many points i want to drill down with you on in the time we have together. first and foremost, sanctions, simply, you talk about whether or not sanctions are actually even effective. looking at the situation we're in now with vladimir putin, do you see them being effective the way that they are designed at this moment? >> so when you see something like sanctions are effective, the question isn't do they work at some goal. the question is what goal are you trying to use them for? it's impossible for them to be effective in general. they need to be targeted to perform a specific action. we can split them into two different aims. one is to destroy the russian economy, and the second is to cause significant economic pain that might cause them to

actually abandon the campaign in ukraine. on the first score, it's very clear the sanctions are succeeding. the sanctions on the russian central bank have been devastating. russia is on the verge of massive recession, on a scale that it hasn't seen in decades. and we're talking mass unemployment and run away inflation. a really scary situation if you're in charge of the russian economy, that is the russian central bank wore funeral black to signify the economy was dying. now, whether or not they're effective in stopping the war, i have quite a bit of skepticism. it doesn't seem like there is -- there's no way the sanctions themselves can actually prevent the russians from doing what they need to do in ukraine. so the question becomes if they're willing to continue to suffer this pain or pursue the campaign, and our previous experience with sanctions and political science literature on the topic suggest they probably will. >> you actually write about how there is a way they could use the sanctions to in fact

de-escalate. military aid and sanctions are powerful tools but neither of them is likely to cause putin to give up on his designs on ukraine wholesale. instead, the west needs to develop a clearer strategy for insuring its efforts have the desired political effect in moscow. which starts by openly laying out the conditions under which the sanctions will be removed. i think this is a fascinating approach to this. can you expand on that and the likelihood this could happen? >> yeah, it's very interesting. so current reporting suggests that the sanctions were thrown together quickly and in some ways in response to emotional appeals made by zelenskyy to european leaders. that really seems to have moved the needle in a way i would have found surprisingly. you don't expect emotional appeals by leaders to be so powerful in changing policy, but the speed in which they were thrown together not only stunned the world and the russians, it also appears to mean they don't really have a plan for what the

sanctions are supposed to do, at least in washington, brussels, in london. really nobody as far as i can tell knows how you're supposed to make this work. now, the best evidence that we have on sanctions suggests you need to tie them to very, very, very specific sets of goals and make those ties sort of emerge out of negotiations. so you don't just say the russians will give in if we sanction them enough. that is typically not what happens because they care so much about winning the war. instead, you offer them some kind of diplomatic concessions along with the end of the sanctions in order to get some kind of negotiated settlement to end the war. the model here is the iran nuclear deal, which was an effective use of sanctions. the u.s. government sanctioned iran for years and the economic pain was enough there could be some kind of agreement. that's sort of the strategy i propose. >> i'm going to be talking a lot more about this because i think it's a fascinating take on what

to do next. appreciate your knowledge on this and joining us this afternoon. make sure you tune in to the podcast in the weeds. >> coming up, everybody, at the top of the hour a shocking photo from ukraine and the story behind it, plus the reality of sending u.s. fighter jets to poland in hopes that country will send theirs to ukraine and how the russian president may react to that. we'll be right back. (music) who said you have to starve yourself to lose weight? who said you can't do dinner? who said only this is good? and this is bad? i'm doing it my way. meet plenity. an fda -cleared clinically proven weight management aid for adults with a bmi of 25-40 when combined with diet and exercise. plenity is not a drug - it's made from naturally derived building blocks and helps you feel fuller and eat less. it is a prescription only treatment and is not for pregnant women or people allergic to its ingredients. talk to your doctor or visit myplenity.com to learn more. to help prevent bleeding gums, try saying hello gumwash with parodontax active gum health.

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