Page 157 - Bluff News Today

Whether this is more likely bluff than war? >> well, in terms of the why now, you have to look at this as a part of something that putin has been trying to accomplish for at least 15 years. it was back in 2007 that he gave a big speech at the security conference saying that this a u.s. led world order was not something that russia supported. and ever since then, hes really been trying and all sort of ways to roll back u.s. influence. especially in eastern europe. that hasnt gone so well. ukraine...

The sea of as sof and the black sea. today peskov denied that saying ships will be allowed to go through. yes, it feels like the noose is tightening and it does not feel very much like a bluff. so much so that british prime minister boris johnson says the next several days could be the most dangerous of this crisis. >> alec see, what does ukraine make of these drills. kyiv is only 75 miles from the border of belarus? >> we know that president zelensky is trying to calm people down. the main mess...

The dog catching the school bus. what do they do at this point? extraordinarily expensive, fighting an insurgency against ukrainian forces, and candidly, if you take a look at the polls coming out inside of russia right thonow, there is no appet for war. i continue to believe this is simply a bluff on the part of the russian leader to achieve, with these threats, his real goals, which is to throw a splinter into nato, to get ukraine to agree never to join nato and also to push back some of the b...

On the ground, that russia is increasing its troop presence and seeming to try to create an excuse to invade. dav david? >> mary bruce live at the white house. martha raddatz sat down with defense secretary lloyd austin today in poland as he was vis visiting with u.s. and polish troops. he made it clear putin assembled troops on the border that clearly point to an invasion and not a bluff. martha then pressing on that point. >> reporter: this is not a bluff. >> i dont believe its a bluff. i thin...

Mobilising troops from the united states and other parts of europe. in a sense, calling president putins bluff. do you think hes bluffing? one of the problems is i think the only person who knows the answer to that question is vladimir putin himself. and i think its fairly clear that that is at least in part what this is about. and that is to say that president putin wants russia to be centre stage again in world diplomacy, he wants the wests and washingtons eyes upon moscow and the kremlin. tha...

Forces but also engineering units, logistics units, radio relay systems, radarsets, logistics units, radio relay systems, radar sets, all these things and russia says it is preparing for a big exercise in belarus but the scale of this and these movements and the nature of these movements and the nature of the units being moved and places they are from, these are all completely anomalous with an explanation, so it may be a bluff but the scale of the bluff, the nature of these movements and the wa...

That the u.s. and nato called that bluff and said, no, for that relatively small step, were going to respond in kind, and then ramp up. that was part of president bidens message today, if russia moves further. this is quite a dangerous game of poker, if you want to call it that, or chicken, that is playing out here with very real consequences ahead for ukraine and frankly given how maximalist putins statement was in his speech last night, perhaps for europe. >> 40 million people caught in the mi...

Russian bullets and missiles and tanks in ukraine. yes, i am. >> reporter: president biden, if sanctions cannot stop president putin, what penalty can? >> i didnt say sanctions could stop him. >> reporter: youve been talking about the threat of these sapgss for several weeks now. >> yes, but the threat of the sanctions and opposing the sanctions and seeing the effect of the sanctions are two different things. theyre duoditwo different thin. hes going to begin to see the effect of the sanctions. ...

They did not draw down as putin claimed, that that incident was an attack against ukrainians, not ukrainians against russians as moscow claimed. this is what the western alliance, the uk, all of the western leaders, the nato leaders as well as of course secretary austin in brussels yesterday had been claiming. what they did was to call their bluff. what secretary blinken did at the u.n. was say, if you really believe in diplomacy, lavrov, foreign minister, come meet with me, lets talk about that...

You first and talk about the tensions that were seeing, the escalations. weve been covering them the last few days. you have the defense secretary, lloyd austin, talking about this, essentially saying that this invasion is imminent. listen. >> -- he could attack in short order or -- >> its not a bluff. >> i dont believe its a bluff. i think, i think hes assembled the right kind, the kind of things that a you would need to conduct a successful invasion. >> so hes saying its not a bluff, it could ...