aren't de-escalating their forces and aren't de-escalating tensions and from the white house perspective how can you have meaningful conversations that can be productive and go some way to achieving russia's goals if you don't have a de-escalation? the two things are kind of interlinked. we asked the kremlin spokesman about that today, and the answer is not us creating the tensions, it is the u.s. creating the tensions, nato's problem that they have been coming closer to us. so the positions on this just haven't moved. they're really a long way apart and it comes to fundamental understandings about nato, and about -- from russia's perspective and nato's perspective. >> and, john harwood, to you, it is not just that putin wants a verbal guarantee from biden on nato. he wants written guarantees from the u.s. and nato, specifically that nato will not expand the military capabilities further eastward and into ukraine. is there any indication from the