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President s message? reporter: it was the optics of the whole thing that was particularly interesting to see putin and see these two no-limits partners at a time that putin s power is very much in question after what happened in late june with the wagner group. and then, of course, president xi, arguably stronger than ever, assuming his role of the leader of the authoritarian bloc, if you will, which also includes belarus and iran which joined this shanghai cooperation organization which was hosted on line by the indian prime minister. and so putin in his message talked about deeper security cooperation between the members of this organization, and he insisted that moscow would stand up against what he called illegitimate sanctions over his unprovoked invasion of ukraine. listen. translator: the russian people are consolidated as never been. the solidarity and high responsibility for the fate of the fatherland was clearly ....
Military analyst and retired lieutenant general mark hurtling and jill dougherty who, of course, is a cnn contributor on russian affairs. thank you for joining me on this fourth of july. jill, i want to start with you. how important is it right now for putin to appear on this global stage surrounded by big global leaders like those of china and india? i think it s crucial because after all, you know, a week or so ago you had a rebellion with troops fighters on their way to moscow. that undermines putin s image not only domestically but internationally, and a lot of these countries that have supported him must be asking the question is he really still in charge, is he still, you know, vladimir putin whom we support, et cetera. lot of questioning behind the scenes, and he absolutely had to get out there. he s been out domestically and now internationally. general hurtling, we just heard today that the nato ....
Excuse me, secretary of defense austin and secretary of state blinken from the united states. there are, of course, jill, real divisions among nato s leaders about how, when, if ukraine should join the nato alliance. how much do you think nato is weighing russia s opposition to the expansion of nato? and how putin may respond to that? oh, i think less than ever. i mean, that used to be the debate, you know, will this anger putin, a lot of the reverse feeling now. i mean, what you hear from the allies, especially the ones in the baltics and poland, et cetera, are saying we don t care what putin thinks. in fact, if we continue to think about what putin thinks, we will wasteful spending our own defense weaken our own defense. it s full steam ahead. the problem i think is the united states and some other countries are a little bit more careful about it, and the trick will be trying to figure out ....
Because largely they re an oil competitor with the united states. and they re also obliged to no anger putin, they re hedging with respect to oil prices and their support for ukraine. obviously they re not going to join sanctions against russia or do anything with russia s ally china. i think that the president is getting very little reduction with gas prices. saudis are not prepared and will not increase production to the extent that it is going to make much of a difference any time soon. the other things that he hopes to gain, i think, is some improvement in the israeli-saudi relationship. i don t think frankly any of this is sufficient grounds to counter what is clearly a backtrack and backsliding on his position. if you read the saudi u.n. ....
That s consistently growing, the donald trump wing, where they re just so interested in xenophobia and following along with whatever rhetoric donald trump is saying, they fundamentally don t understand the danger putin poses. tim, there is a divide within the republican party on this, but there doesn t seem to be any daylight between the united states and the alliance when it comes to pushing back against putin. and that, i think, to my mind, is the more important relationship to pay attention to. i think, jonathan, it s important to look back, before the invasion began, it was easy for opponents of the president and republicans in particular to criticize and use praise of putin or how putin has managed the situation to criticize president biden. once the invasion happened and over the last four days of fighting, the calculation has ....