president of the council on foreign relations richard haass and former deputy security adviser to president obama ben rhodes, an msnbc contributor. so far this morning, richard, what do you make of what you've heard from the two men? they have had the meeting, have given their addresses. lavrov said the united states will give us a written point-by-point reply to our demands. what do you make of it so far? >> there's zero chance. soap the real question is what does mr. putin, not mr. lavrov, he never shows more flexibility, what is putin prepared to accept? the president said an interesting thing today. putin needs something. can he find that something diplomatically in europe? does he decide to do something in the western hemisphere to create a parallelism? you've created threats to me.