Calling Genocide News Today

alarms about what his return to the white house could look like. >> you would never abuse power as retribution against anybody. >> except for day one. plus, abortion fwiet. the texas supreme court temporarily blocks a pregnant woman from an emergency abortion. >> theres no outcome here that i take home a healthy baby girl, you know. so its hard. >> will the state force her to continue her pregnancy? and new charges. president bidens son hunter is indicted for the second time this y...

Ukraine cannot be used inside russia. cannot be used to threaten moscow. cant be used in a way that putin can then say, you know, his existence is at stake. because then at that point, you dont know what hes going to do and how hes going to respond. but its such a tricky balance to walk when you see the kind of slaughter that were seeing in bucha and in other, you know, mykolaiv, mariupol. in these areas that have fought so valiantly, but at the same time, youve seen citizens, ukrainian people, ...

Of deaths and set of, again, i cant think of the right words to describe this brutality. >> well, the atrocities are really difficult to process as humans. its hard to imagine the humans that carried them out. two significant things, i think, that i dont want to gloss over. secretary of state tony blinken made clear that he has enough information to assess that this was not the act of some rogue russian unit, but it was exactly as you said, part of the russian government and russian military str...

Ambassador mcfaul in a second, because the first day of this, before the war actually had started but that monday of that week, when putin gave his first crazy speech and sort of indicated that were about to have an invasion, i was on -- you were away, i was sitting in this chair, and i was talking to a very good panel, one of whom was mike mcfaul and i said, you know, if this -- at some point, this is going to get really bad and if it gets really bad, i dont know what really bad is, is that che...

Sanctions. the thing thats propping up russia and what zelenskyy called blood money is the oil and gas revenue going to europe. that is the thing that could decapitate the russian effort, which is if they all say, like lithuania did. were going to wean ourselves oil and gas, not just coal. they would have no money for the war. coal is relatively small compared to gas and oil. and doesnt affect the europeans as much even though it affects the russians. we keep waiting for the russians to do more ...

Theyre not aiming for a military battle. they tried and failed and the genocide is the military strategy. and as president zelenskyy said today, you know, over to you, western world. >> you know, the brutality of russian troops, i hate to pile on the russians, but the libraries have shelves full of books of russian massacres during world war ii after world war ii. the great british military historian said the largest, greatest number of mass rapes was by russian troops after, during and after wo...

Happening. theres genocide campaigns happening inside ukraine and russia is gaslighting its own people about it. >> helena, this is where the complete saturation of propaganda inside russia confounds me as a factor for determining which military m ises to give putin. we give him the teeniest or most lethal, hes going to say the same thing. why are we so hostage to russian information ecosystems? >> i dont think its a worry about what he will say. i think our worry, the administration worry is ab...

>> and what is, you know -- i had helene cooper on in the last hour, and when you hear more weapons and more sanctions, as a u.s. policy, or western policy, i always want to understand what is still -- what have we left on the table? how much have we held back in terms of sanctions and weapons? and you were in the region. i mean, what is the sense of, you know, are we 40% there, waiting for the genocide to really kick in before we get to 100%? what is the delta between what weve given and what i...

Theres others. i was talking about mike. there are more oligarchs that we could sanction, more people that we could hurt but the biggest one is the energy thing. the problem on the weapons is a lot of whats going on is stuff that were purposely not talking about, right? its hard for anybody whos not inside the military and inside nato to really know exactly how many. we know two things. we know, one, that zelenskyy feels like hes not getting as much as he needs and we also know theres more weapo...

This is a very extended conflict that russia has initiated, and i think that nato, the united states, ukraine and all the allies and partners that are supporting ukraine are going to be involved in this for quite some time. >> its where we begin the hour with michael mcfaul. also joining us, katty kay, bbc news u.s. special correspondent. with me here onset, john heilemann, the host and executive producer of showtimes "the circus," all msnbc contributors. i need to start with you, ambassador mcf...