difficult question, then. should we have nato police no fly zones that would involve nato shooting down russian planes? again, you re asking me tojump into an operational decision, and i m saying first ask ourselves what do we agree should be our policy to stand up to russia, for which a no fly zone might be part of that aspect. it could be that we do rule it out. what i m saying is every time you re asked a difficult question, don t stand up and say to russia, we re not going to do a no fly zone. we re not going to send in a force prior to the invasion to actually protect ukraine, even though they requested this. we re actually explaining to russia what our red lines are. no general on the battlefield ever declares what they won t do. so even if we were not going to do it, you still keep the other side guessing. so, all right, let me give you a quote from john kirby, the us pentagon spokesman who is talking about why the proposal to transfer polish fighterjets from a us base in ge
drawing a firm line when it comes to a no fly zones. the only word missing at the end of the season is yet. we heard firm lines against switching russia. we heard no when hearing about nord stream 2. we heard a million reasons why sanctions could not be introduced against russia. but then it all happened. it all happened a little too many when it was escalating to levels never seen before in europe since world war ii. when ukrainian lives were being lost. at this point when i say that it s a matter of time for them to start taking action, that time is kossing human lives, ukrainian lives. the migs, the possibility of
we re willing to do. well, i think we re going to hear from zelenskyy tomorrow some familiar things. no-fly zones. we re going to hear about continuing the putting in the weaponry and the munitions and pressing for more. i think we re going to hear about the mig swap with poland, f-16s going to poland and polish mig-29s can get into ukraine. the administration has said that this is something that will is not something that the administration supports. they re afraid this is going to be escalatory and cause world war iii. i think we understand where they re coming from on that. and you re right. i was very vocal about doing something more, and i think there probably is more going on behind the scenes than we know in terms of pretty important assistance, in terms of intelligence, important in terms of targeting, that kind of thing. from u.s. assets that are in poland or in other places.
weapons being used, not in how people traditionally describe it as to preserve peace and stability but really to blackmail the whole world. we re seeing that putin is using it to get everyone to stay out, meaning that we would have to watch these events unfold. it triggers this incredibly difficult questions for us. for example, how much are we prepared to watch ukraiians suffer before we dare to intervene. of course things like no-fly zones, i want to help ukrainians right now. i feel frustrated watching this unfold and terrified about what the consequences would be for ukrainians. but the fact that the west has nuclear weapons means the stakes are so high and would you risk nuclear war? what would you risk nuclear war for? and nothing would really justify nuclear war. and you mentioned blackmail, which is a good word. on the one hand what s happening in ukraine is a reminder of the dangers of nuclear weapons, for
see this kind of confrontation with russia as it would have been 30 years ago with the soviet union. it s a very different moment and all putin has to be willing to to is threaten the use of nuclear weapons, chemical weapons and that puts us in a position where we re letting him set the marching orders and the red line. what do you say thomilitary response, which is how do you take out his air defenses? you would have to attack russia to take out those sam 400s. are you willing to do that? because how do you create the no-fly zone? first you have to clear the space and control the space before you can have a no-fly zone and how do you do that without attacking russia proper? there risk. there s different iterations of no-fly zones. we can declare one over all of