all people inr ukraine. threat to cut off gas escalates the crisis for washington. peter cook has the latest on the u.s. response. how worried is the white house by these latest developments? >> this is another step up in the escalation. the spokesman telling reporters there is no indication there is much of a risk of a natural gas shortage in ukraine. they have a lot in storage. europe could sense him toward ukraine. the white house is not thrilled with this latest development. russia prides itself on being a source of gas around the world. it might not want to undermine that. of that -- exercises that were planned a long time ago but still is a symbolic show of force. to talk.ides continue and secretary of state john kerry spoke to his russian counterpart by telephone. that is the latest. the russian threat to cut off gas has pressured the u.s. and the eu to speed up there promised financial aid to the ukraine so the country can pay its natural gas bills. one piece of news came from the imf. the head of the international monetary fund's team set the funding is pre

ukraine. i think it is a mistake to dive into partisan politics on this. this is a sad statement on stu how far we have sunk. inrea lot of countries the world and many leaders in the world to take actions without thinking once about the united states of america. vladimir putin has his own domestic reasons for doing what he was doing in crimea and why he was making those decisions. as far as the sequester, i agree with you -- it does upset me when i hear republicans in the armed services committee complain about president obama cutting the defense budget when all he did was present a defense budget that marked to the number the republican house on the democratic senate passed. that was the number we set. sequestration only happened because back in 2011, republicans refused to raise the debt ceiling. they, in essence, hell their credit rating hostage and the only way out of it was sequester and sequester included defense. i would vote right now to turn off sequester. our deficit has come down by even more than was required by sequester for a variety of different reasons. i think sequester is harming not just our mi

inre is an example of this leaders of city council. we could make some arrangement with the new power about new governors. this is part of the transition that you can see in some regions of ukraine. the odessably in region. involves local elites again and local government. with the support of foreign oritary troops in crimea with the support of paramilitary , and with strong support from the local anyway, inelite the aftermath of the revolution and important parts of regional yanukovych's networks will lead to new power. there are separatist movements. see, you can see for example the governor of a certain region. even the city had -- head of one area has not created a new government. the local elites want to the port ukrainian -- support ukrainian protest in crimea. inter-elitel of settlement. regionstern ukrainian are probably the best way to engage with local ely -- elites. time, some regional similar to the ones who were targeted by anti-made on the test -- protests.on -- maidan the head of the fraction of the party has been openly speaking out about this. protection of the russian language and other eastern european regions. time, yanukovych and his team have weakened the s