Par Kiev News Today

Welcoming vladimir putin with open arms. >> well, ian, congratulations on that reporting. i love it when i have gotten out there and done that sort of footwork of doing your own polling. its amazing how much you can get a real sense of confidence about people really are if you go door to door with people. thank you so much. ian williams in kiev. thank you so much for that reporting. coming up, hows putins land grab playing stateside. defense secretary chuck hagel got an earful on capitol hill ...

The streets jostling cars in crimea, and you know, the wrong kind of spark can really send this thing south in a hurry. so you need that sort of, you know, formality. >> he wont even use contractions when he speaks. he wont say im not. he will say i am not. he is very articulate. heres the question. theyre trying to, in paris today, whats the diplomatic mission here, to calm down the politicians in the new kiev government? >> right. >> or to encourage them that money is coming, you dont have to ...

Like its primarily about making life uncomfortable, as uncomfortable as possible for the ukrainian government. and gaining more leverage than it does at this stage as a precursor to sending troops in there. so yes, in a sense, it could have been worse. but certainly, in the eyes of the ukrainian government, they have real concern that russia may try to grab parts of russian-speaking eastern ukraine, although i should add, having just been there, that even among those russian speakers, many we sp...

Anti-sumettic and not fashionest. hes been within ten feet of him. >> theres a history there. they have to make sure that people have that impression. >> there he is on the right. i dont want to -- theres nothing more serious in the last century than that issue of the holocaust, but it is interesting, they dont want to be nailed. >> no, they dont. so smart of kerry, though, to take that walk through -- >> there he is again. >> -- through kiev and demonstrate the lie that putin is telling about h...

The city or some of those eastern cities, i think he might well do it. i think absent such an excuse, i think he would be hard pressed to roll the tanks, you know, up to the deneaper. >> lets talk about john kerry. he ran for president and lost a heart breaker in ohio. one of those states, and that was it. hes had to live with that. he said hes never going to run for office again. i think kerry is looking good. >> yeah, i mean, kerry is really -- i think history will judge him as a strong and ef...

Putin that it is in his best economic interest to take that off-ramp and not confront the west. back to you, chris. >> great report. that was andrea mitchell. shes traveling with the secretary of state, john kerry, now in beautiful paris. anyway, european leaders are reluctant to back tougher sanctions against russia giving their economic dependence on that renal gions natural gas. now from kiev, ian joins us right now by phone. thank you for joining us. i guess this is one of those very, very c...