affairs. keep weakening the united states by attacking us internally then slice off the piece of the ukraine here and there. what i see is a potential opportunity for him to play off the old minsk agreement and try to sew some disunity between the europeans, ukrainians an the united states and say let's sit down at the table. this is unsettled. let's spend some time settling it and he could end up with an agreement that favors russia, hurts ukraine, but preserves the peace. i think even though there's political unity in the u.s., the longer this goes on, the more putin tries to find ways to breach any sort of unity, i think that there's a risk that he could get what he wants without war. >> michael crowley, take us inside what looked like sort of feverish preparations, any outcome, any choice putin makes, he still is the wild card here