0 parts. bahrain, denmark, germany, italy, kazakhstan, kuwait, qatar, uzbekistan. many will be transporting people through their territories to safety. albania, kosovo, macedonia, mexico, poland, qatar, ukraine and uganda have made generous offers regarding the relocation efforts for at-risk afghans. we appreciate the support. we're very encouraged other countries are also considering providing additional support, this is something that we will continue to be focused. finally this morning, secretary blinken participated in a virtual meeting to discuss the on going security situation in afghanistan and others to safely evacuate our it is ens and afghan allies that may be at risk. the allies agreed that any future government must adhere to afghanistan's international obligations, safeguard the human rights of afghans, women, children and minority, uphold the rule of law and allow unhindered access and ensure that afghanistan never serves as a safe haven for terrorism. secretary blinken appreciated all the service in afghanistan and our enduring commitment to the alliance going forward. one additional element. today in concert with the united kingdom, the u.s. is imposing additional costs on the one-year anniversary of the poisoning of russian opposition figure alexai navalny. we condemn his attack and the efforts to stop his efforts to hold the russian government accountable and his imprisonment in january of this year. it's clear that russian officials are targeting mr. navalny for his activism and efforts to reveal what are uncomfortable truths about russian officials corruption and his effort to give a voice to citizens with their government and its modelsies. our actions today in which were exercised by the u.s. government send a clear signal that there's no impunity for the use of chemical weapons. any use of chemical weapons is unacceptable and contra vaccines international norms. the u.s. calls on russia government to meaditely an unconditionally release mr. navalny. the department submitted a report to congress today pursuant to the protecting europe's energy security to continue to address nord stream 2. two entities will be sanctioned and two vessels will be listed as blocked property. the administration says that nord stream 2 is a bad deal. we remain implementing tisa as we take the risks the pipeline would pose to security of ukraine and front line nato and e.u. countries. with today's action, the administration has now sanctioned seven persons and identify 16 of their vessels as blocked property pursuant to pisa in connection with this nord stream 2 project. the administration workses with germany and others to implement the july 21 joint statement that we agreed to with germany on support for ukraine energy security and our climate goals. today's actions send a clear signal to russia that the u.s. is united in our commitment to impose costs on russia. now we have questions. >> i have a couple questions on numbers. in his speech today the president said that the president was making the same commitment to afghans. he mentioned siv applicants, people that worked at ngos, other vulnerable afghans. do you have a general estimate of how many people would be included in that universe of potential evacuees to include all of those groups of afghans? >> well, let me take this in turns. as you know, we have a commitment to the american citizens who are in afghanistan. we have spoken of our enduring commitment to those afghans who have worked with us. that includes our locally employed staff. that is to say those that worked with us at our embassy in kabul as well as the many brave afghans that partnered with the united states government over the course of some 20 years. many instances putting themselves or their families at risk. this so-called siv program is a program that this administration has prioritized from day 1 and we've made very clear that we are committed to doing all we can for these brave afghans and their families. when it comes to american citizens, when it comes to our locally employed staff and when it comes to a certain segment of the siv population, those that completed stages of their security vetting process, we have reached out to them and we have instructed them to consider traveling to the hamed karzai international airport.and numbers can be difficult to discern. we know in the siv populations that there are a number of afghans that have completed what is called the chief of mission stage and completed part or all of the security vetting stage. those are the ones that we reached out to and their dependents. so you know that siv applicants are eligible to bring a spouse and minor children as well that adds to the tallies. there's been a lot of questions about figures when it comes to u.s. citizens. there's context there. as you know, nick, whether the country is france or afghanistan, the state department doesn't track the movement of american citizens. >> i'm not asking about american citizens. i'm asking about the broad universe of africans that would potentially come out. the president said with an interview with abc the president said no more than 65,000 people. a statement today from one advocacy group that said the u.s. should consider airlifting out about 200,000 people. there's some estimates that there may be as many as 500,000 people that need to come out. we know the president has a number in his head of 65,000 people for that broad universe not talking about american citizens. does the state department have a number when it looks at the overall capacity that it can get out and how many people may want to come out? >> so again, that overall number will depend on a few factors. first, it depends on the number of people that wish to be relocated. that includes all of those categories. we made contact with many of these individuals. we have indicated that if they wish to relocate that we are offering to facilitate that for them and in some cases they should make -- consider making their way to the airport compound. the broad point here is that we have dramatically increased capacity over recent days. this is capacity that is on top of operation refuge that we launched last month to begin the airlift operation. what it comes down to is the fact that we're going to do the as much as we can for as long has we can for as many people as we can. >> just to hammer this out, the president has someone -- someone gave him a number of 65,000 people. so can you -- clearly when you go about planning this evacuation process, you have this deadline of august 31. you have the capacity -- maybe that's somewhere in the range of 100,000 people or whatever it may be. what is the state department anying in terms of how many people will overall will want to come out? >> those are conversations ongoing right now. we have reached out to all of these populations, to american citizens, afghans that may be at risk, to third country nationals, partners that worked with us on the ground. in many cases to make the off of relocation. before we can relocate someone, we need to ascertain that person in fact wants to be relocated. when it comes to the american citizens, this task force that i talked about, what they're doing -- these are individuals not in kabul. they're around the world. they're going through the registrations. the registration that american citizens based in kabul have submitted using the contact information that they have provided. at first started with e-mails. now we moved on to personal communications and personal correspondence. we're reaching out with phone calls and contacting them, asking about their situation, where they are, who they may be with and whether they would like to seek relocation to the united states. >> you guys are in a situation now where you have this deadline and the promise from the president. i don't see how the two things can be squared if you have this promise from the president to help this massive group of people but essentially now a 11-day deadline to get that done. how are you going to do it? >> we heard from the department of defense tremendous airlift capacity. that capacity has increased by the day. right now we are able and you heard the numbers today, 5,700 people, 13,000 since august 14, 18,000 people since the end of last month. of course, there's several different ingredients. the most important is the people. having the possible present and alerting the right categories of people at the right time that is something that the department of state has been doing for several days now. the airlift capacity is another element of this. dod has spoken to their ability to increase that capacity over the past several days. then the transit sites. as you know, many of these individuals we've been able to relocate, have been going to dohar qatar as of late. we're gratified that we have a number of countries, many of which i just mentioned that have offered to host, whether it is american citizens that are transiting back to the united states, whether it is third country nash names and system of them have been very generous and offered to host at-risk afghans. i can confirm that we have begun to transfer people from dohar. the first flights have arrived in germany. we expect to have other locations coming online in the coming days, which will allow us to make sure that we can maximize that flow. again, what we want to do in all of this, the metric and the only metric that we care about is how many people we are able to relocate, to bring to safety, whether that is americans that were repatriating to the united states, whether it's third country nationals whose relocation we're facilitating to their home countries or whether it is to at-risk afghans. many cases siv applicants will be brought to the united states. in some cases we have heard these very generous offers of allies that will be willing to post at-risk afghans as they undergo that process. >> can you list the countries that are right now receiving the u.s. evacuation flights? >> we will have a statement from the secretary where he's going to be in a position to offer some additional detail on this. as you know, many of these individuals have been going to dohar to date. the first flights landed in ramstein. bahrain has agreed to host and has been playing host to some of those we have transferred from afghanistan. you'll see in a statement from the secretary i would expect later today, a broader universe of countries that have agreed to host either at-risk afghans, be american citizens or third country nationals. >> we're now almost a week into this evacuation effort. as of today, there's one country that is definitively accepting these evacuation flights. what does that say about your process behind this? >> that's not accurate. there's one country where at-risk afghans have been going. we have been at this for some time now. since the security situation in kabul began to deteriorate. among those, we have evacuated in the past week or so have included members of our embassy team, american direct hire employees -- >> at-risk afghans are the majority of the people we're talking about here. if you had one country that up until this date has agreed to accepted the afghans, what happened? >> as you know, we have -- dod has spoken to their tremendous capacity here in the united states to host siv applicants at military bases. they have spoken to this in terms of tens of thousands. my colleague at the pentagon was just speaking to this. it's not the case that there's one location for at-risk afghans. as these operations have started -- >> one foreign country accepting at risk applicants at this moment. is that correct? >> there is -- first of all, we relocated to the united states 2,000 siv applicants under operation allies. dohar has generously agreed to host these at-risk afghans and continue their processing and continue to their final destinations. in many cases, that is the united states. so qatar is not intended to be a long-term location for any africans for any third country nash names. flights have started to take off from qatar to bring people on a commercial basis, on a charter basis to the united states in the case of american citizens to ramstein as i mentioned and for others we'll have additional capacity coming online soon in addition to the military bases here that as you heard from the pentagon can host thousands upon thousands of at risk afghans. >> can you bring us up to speed on what exactly happened today with regard to the flights? one of the generals said it was in the thousands of afghans that were delayed for six hours today when it was -- they were will alerted that the airport shut down. is it reopen? is it at equilibrium yet or are they headed to ramstein? >> the status didn't change. it reach a point that we thought it prudent to continue relocation flights from kabul to dohar until we were able to move some of the individuals in dohar to other locations. >> is that still the case? >> no. that's not the case. you'll need to talk to my pentagon colleagues about this. they briefed there was a brief pause. the pause has ended. as i told kylie and nick, we've been able to transfer individuals from dohar to other locations includes ramstein air force base. this is not just a purely military relocation efforts. when individuals arrive in qatar, especially u.s. citizens, they have charter options, they have commercial options and that will continue to allow us to relocate individuals from dohar and even more so now that we have additional sites coming online, have already come online and will come online in the coming hours and days. >> neil: we're monitoring the state department presser featuring ned price there, a couple of developments to pass along to you right now. we're getting word from our jennifer griffin that there are 14,000 afghans inside the kabul international airport grounds. pending flights that were supposed to take off to qatar, they're not taking anymore for the time being. so you have a situation where many are seated on the tarmac in idol c-17s. we don't know what the status is, what is behind the significance of this delay. there was a word that qatar, which is processing a lot of the paperwork for those that ultimately make their way out of the country were overwhelmed and they're taking about reinforcing that with more people. separately we're hearing two house makers on a call with the defense secretary, lloyd austin, have passed along reports that americans in the country have been beaten by the taliban in kabul. this would be contrary to what the president had said about 45 minutes ago when he smoke to the nation about this. jacqui heinrich is on that story. what do we know about this, jacqui? >> i know from the lawmakers that i talked to that the defense secretary said there were reports that the americans had been beaten by the taliban trying to get to the airport. i don't have more detail on exactly what was said. it certainly contradicts what the president said that he was not aware of any instances where americans had difficulty getting to the airport or had any sort of trouble with the taliban. beyond that, i was in the east room with the president. there were a number of things that he said that left even me a little confused. it was unclear whether he intends to use the u.s. military to go beyond the airport to do any sort of rescue operations. he did do a step beyond what he had said early they are week. he said any american that wants to get home will be able to. he did extend that offer to the afghan allies and refugees who assist in the war effort. it's not clear how hi intends for that to be carried out. he said so far there's no problems getting americans through the taliban check points. bear in mind the documents that people would need to get on the flights is what would get them killed by the taliban. here's what the president said that was so vague. >> let me be clear. my american that wants to come home, we will get you home. make no mistake, this evacuation mission is dangerous. it involves risks to our armed forces and it's being conducted under difficult circumstances. i cannot promise what the final outcome will be. what it will be, that it will be without risk. >> the president did have clear questions about whether he saw a dissent cable from the state department employees in mid july warning of a potential collapse of kabul. it was sent to secretary of state anthony blinken. the president said he took action based on a range of opinions. listen. >> all kinds of cables, all kinds of advice. if you notice, it range from this group saying -- they tint say it would fall when it did fall, but saying that it would fall, others saying wouldn't happen a long time and they would sustain themselves. i made the decision. >> the president said this is one of the most largest airlifts in history. he said it presents risks to u.s. armed forces, something that he takes personally given his son's service in iraq. now that seems to be setting the stage potentially for a military rescue operation. it's very unclear and of course what we gather is that these assessments are being reevaluated day to day. however, the president did say that when the mission is finished, the u.s. will complete its military withdrawal and finally bring an end to 20 years of war in that country leaving open the possibility it sounded like that troops would remain there beyond the august 31 deadline. something that he has said over and over this week and other cabinet officials have said over and over this week that we thought we were on target for, this seemed to leave the door open a little bit more than each other time we heard updates, neil. >> neil: couple of questions that i have. i was confused as well. when the president left himself open to a rescue mission, did that mean because it doesn't right now that our soldiers would go right up to that taliban control perimeter and if necessary pierce it and go into kabul like other countries are to get their people? >> we don't know. rescue mission could mean a number of things. as we know from our sourcing, the state department is looking to nonmilitary ways to stage and move americans from around the kabul area. i got that confirmed yesterday based on source material that i had. we don't know exactly what rescue operation means. unless it carries the word military in front of it, it could mean a lot of things. until the president indicates that he's given that order, we heard from the state department and the pentagon that this is the mission right now and the president has said these are the restrictions, the guardrails. i father it would come from him. we don't know by what means he plans to make good on that promise that any american who wants to get out can come home and that he was extending that also to our allies. neil? >> neil: jacqui, thanks very much. just to update you on the importance of this distinction between whether we stay put within that cordoned off area within the airport or venture out to the perimeter that you've seen the taliban set up around the airport, it comes at a time that we're getting reports that great britain is speeding up their own evacuations of nearly 1,000 in the last 24 hours. that is outside the so-called green zone in kabul itself. germany has dispatched military heicopters to get people out. we don't know how many are involved. we're hearing reports that an elite team of french officers have entered the capitol green zone to do the same. we have not mimicked that type of activity. that's a big question to kickoff with kick lippold that joins us right now, the former u.s.s. cole commander. good seeing you. what do you make of these european countries are doing to get their people out and what we are doing. >> well, neil, thanks for having me on. i think what it shows off the bat is