for that, we turn to steven pifer, who served as u.s.sador to ukraine during the clinton administration. he's senior fellow at the brookings institution. and john mearsheimer, a professor of international security policy at the university of chicago. so what do you think is the answer to the question, steven pifer? >> i think the answer is that we should provide additional military assistance to crairng including some defensive arms and that's designed to support diplomacy. it's designed to give der terence to further russian aggression and maybe change that calculation in moscow where putin concludes he can't use military force. he has to go and seek a negotiated settlement. >> ifill: so you're suggesting the u.s. provide weapons they can use defensively, not offensively? >> first of all the group that i was with when we proposed additional military assistance, the bulk of that is non-military assistance. the one area we visited ukraine three weeks ago we found a real need for light anti-armor weapons. the ukrainians have stocks that ar

steven pifer, former u.s.sador to the ukraine and now a senior fellow at the brookings institution, ambassador thanks for joining us. arming ukraine. secretary kerry said he wanted to do it the white house is gettinging ready to pull. now? not so much. what do you think? >> the goal of arming ukraine, for those of us who advocated has been to change the calculus in moscow to raise the cost of aggression to the russians to the point where the kremlin concludes that military action is no longer worthwhile and to move them to negotiated diplomatic solution. and in that sense, i actually thought that the visit of chancellor merkel revealed a lot less difference than people were talking about on saturday. the germans are not going to provide arms to ukraine. nobody expected them to. but seems to me that she made the point while there will be u.s./european unity. there may be some disagreements that may include this question of providing arms. >> help us with this question, it plays into the criticism of u.s. never