al jazeera car kid, eastern new grain, perfect a welcome william courtney to out of the are now i don't senior fellow at the rand corporation and a former us diplomat. mr. courtney, our correspondent, was pointing out earlier how the readout from the compensation between the us and you can and presidents today with only a few lines long way previously had been paragraphs of, of, of discussion between the 2. it feels like there's really not a lot to talk about when certainly nothing you should talk about on the diplomatic front you over the length of the reed. it's not really that important. what is important is the scope for diplomacy really has shrunk dramatically. and we've already seen last week, present back on the foreign secretary of great britain. the defense sector grew were in moscow and received absolutely low personal whatsoever to believe that she would pull back or withdraw. oh, she also be there on monday. she like to get the same treatment. now for the european leaders to go see poto law sell is important because it will help them and for a sanctions later because they'll

can see that a russian invasion is now taking place. multifaceted, at landon c, let's bring in william courtney. he's not junk. seen a fellow at the rand corporation. he serves a us diplomats and white house senior director for russia. ukraine and eurasian affairs joins us live now from washington d. c. so let's just take a pause. william. we've we, we saw earlier, the separatist leaders in ukraine. cool for russian military assistance. as that you insecure to council meeting was going on. putin was ordering what he called a special military operation in the don bass region. how significant an ominous is this move at all. we now looking at a full scale invasion of ukraine. oh, so your thoughts on this? by calling it a special motor operation. i put to may have intended to imply that it will be limited in terms of which kinds of arms will be yours, or perhaps a geographic scope that will involve the attack or how much of your crank and clear out the explosions in the cities to begin though the war with explosions in the cities suggest a shock and awe effort to something that the u. s. u, as in g

all right, so william courtney that a junk sina thought of the rand corporation, william, thank you very much. that for your assessment of these rapidly developing situation in ukraine, let's go back to our zeros under simmons. he joins us now from the ukrainian capital, kim, andrew, i'm not sure if you can hear us, andrew and things moving thick and fast. just tell us, bring us up to date with what you've been seeing and hearing. yes, i think you can hear us now. what's been happening. they haven't keyed in the last few minutes since we last spoke to you. multiple attack sir, concentrated initially on the airport for a small airport or the we are now hearing from the interior ministry that cruise missiles have been used. ah, we can identify the, the very, very loud explosions or the whole sky line lives up to the north west of the city, or about half an hour ago. at that appeared to be a hard air strike on the international airport. or we know that people have been evacuated from international airport, all staff and anyone else. there passengers and so on. there have been a siren scream

want to bring in nbc's peter alexander who has raced back, courtney cubii, andrea mitchell and former deputy national security adviser ben williamsibutor. peter, reaction now from the white house formally and we understand president biden is on the phone again are right? >> yeah, that's right. i'm told by white house officials that the president is speaking by phone with the german chancellor scholz as well as with the french president, emmanuel macron. each of those leaders spoke with president putin in the half 24 yourself who. the president likely getting their takeaways from the conversations as they also work in conjunction and response to putin and his latest statement, again, recognizing those two regions in the far eastern portion of ukraine, part of the donbas, luhansk and donetsk, people's republic as they are described this. in that announcement from the white house officially coming from the press secretary jen psaki is significant. the first set of sanctions here, and hallie, you pin pained one of the key statements. they said to be clear these measures are separate from and would be in addition to the swift and deve

panelist yamiche alcindor, courtney kube, white house bureau chief ashley parker, white house journalist peggy noonan. and we're also joined by william taylor, former ambassador to ukraine. ambassador, i want to start with you. you have a lot of insight into the ukranian government. zelensky, this is one fired-up leader of his country, frustrated. he seems to be as frustratd with the west as anybody. >> no, chuck, he's clearly frustrated with putin. he's got allies. he was there addressing those allies in munich yesterday, exactly what you say. he's got complaints about more support he would like to have, but the real villain, let's be clear, is sitting in the kremlin. >> as you hear about this, anything to do to stop war, is there anything reasonable to discuss between ukraine and russia at this point? >> probably not between ukraine and russia. there is reasonable discussions to be had between russia and the united states. the russians are after things that ukraine can't really deliver. the russians are after a rollback. the russians don't want nato to accept -- >> it's a pawn, right? >> ukraine has a gun to their head while russia