ambassador vershbow: i think you are right. we have seen the russians, who performed abysmally in the first weeks of this war and suffered enormous losses. at least learning from some of their mistakes, not being quite as incompetent as they were at the start but we should not be complacent about that. i think it still remains to be seen how much they have improved and as the ukrainian counteroffensive's began to get traction later than we hoped, but beginning to get more traction, whether the russians are going to have as easy a time as they think they will have in the rebuffing of ukrainian forces. i would be interested in general clark's view if he can come in on this. i think that there are reports of declining morale, of desertions from the front. russians treat their troops in very inhumane ways. the people that are recruited or drafted are given very little training in many cases to the point that the average soldier sent to the front can only expect to live for four more months. it is still, i think, ukraine's to win. t

we have two panels that will join us virtually, one of them is ambassador alexander vershbow, former ambassador to russia and former deputy secretary-general to nato and i believe our fourth panelist has been delayed but we hope you will join us soon, he is retired army general wesley clark, former supreme allied commander europe. now i will turn it over to these distinguished individuals to present a memo to the president. thank you very much. >> this paper is a result of concerns the group of 42 who signed on to this paper have the we face an existential challenge or great security challenge from vladimir putin's russia. is worn ukraine as part of a much broader effort to restore control across post-soviet space and if he's not defeated in ukraine we will face a major security challenge, direct threat to our interests in europe, possible provocation into war, the baltic states, poland, romania and a group of people, we did three roundtables, we sent many hundreds of e-mails to come up with the paper which we think represents american interests and calls for strong policy by the adm

it we cannot restrain it from further aggression. would like to add something to that, ambassador vershbow, i would like to point out one point when the day comes. i would like it to be the 24th year, but ukraine will have it the guarantee of article five, will russia test the reliability of nato, will it fail, how will nato react? nato will respond in the spirit of article five, an attack on one is an attack on all, and we hope that deterrence works, if not. a member of the alliance will have to take some appropriate action , so the ambassador said that when the day comes, russia will obviously realize that its missile is aimed at a nato member country, we have two more questions, ambassador turyansky, thank you very much, i'm retired ambassador turyansky. i worked for 21 years in the diplomatic service of ukraine, i want to say that i am grateful to the atlantic council for the position and foundation of arseniy yatsenyuk, for starting to discuss the issues of the future agenda at the washington summit of the 24th year, 10 months before its start, this is very important. because of this