west, says that's a sham. putin wants an excuse just to seize additional parts of ukraine, to seize parts of eastern ukraine. let's go to the white house, to our correspondent there, michelle kosinski. what's the white house line on vladimir putin? >> reporter: so far they have not made any additional statements. we did get a lot of information on what the administration views as putin's mindset throughout in at a background briefing yesterday. the senior administration officials described what they think is strategy -- his strategy is. ultimately to even if it is through a sort of decentralized or federalized system with these regions breaking off from control of the kiev government and leaning towards russia, russia would essentially control the foreign and domestic policies of ukraine. from putin today we heard some things that were very much expected, denying any involvement, denying there were troops within eastern ukraine, denying involvement in those