. >> for more i'm joined from washington dc by ambassador william courtney, serving for kazakhstan and georgia. good to see you. the agreement calls for amnesty for protesters, for people to disarm and calls for other efforts to end the violence. do you think it will help to ukraine? >> it's possible that it will help de-escalate. a lot depends on the russian military to comply with the agreement. it calls for all sides not to use violence, but it calls for disarming illegal formations. vladimir putin, in his press conference this morning, implied that russia was not connected to the illegal formations. if that's the case, then the kiev authorities are prevented from using violence, if you will, to crack down on illegal formations in their own countries. a lot depends on how it is implemented. >> he did admit that russian troops were involved in what happened in ukraine. do you think there's the danger, as some said, that this agreement will buy time for vladimir putin to continue to destabilize eastern ukraine. >> he admitted that the russian troops had been involved in crimea, and th

we are joined by william courtney, who served as an ambassador, and a fellow of the foreign policy in new york city, her latest book is "the lost journey into the gulag of the russian mind." >> ambassador, you have warned that this might not end with crimea, that russia will want more and after the unrest ukraine sent some of the security forces into donetsk after russia had warned them not to. it seems like the situation in eastern ukraine is developing into a powder keg. >> yes, that's correct. with 40,000 russian forces mobilized on the border of ukraine, they have been at a high state of alert for a couple of weeks. you can't keep troops in a high state of alert for very long. it's true that the troops have sustaining capabilities, like field hospitals. they are there for activity that will be pretty large. what will be different now though than the crimean situation, where the russians have tactical surprise, this time there'll be resistance from the ukrainians. >> an oped piece in forbes said that this is all part of a coordinated attack on putin's part, that he started a covert