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Confident assessments of ukraine's chances of winning the war publicly in recent days and weeks, it's not a settled issue. and that's why you hear general milley saying if. right? if it were to fall, these are the consequences here. so i think there's still urgency about sending aid to keep ukraine able to defend itself. >> jim sciutto, thank you for all your reporting, your hard work there, and stay safe to you and your team. with us now is our cnn national security analyst and former director of national intelligence, james clapper. director clapper, it's a pleasure to speak to you. general ...

Tactical nuclear weapons than we do, and so i can foresee a situation where if putin is being -- if he himself perceives he's being defeated or russia is being defeated, that he may decide that the way to salvage the situation is the use of nuclear weapons. i hope to god that doesn't happen, but it's not something that can be dismissed. and as the cia director recently said, you just can't take lightly statements made that infer the use of nuclear weapons. and, of course, general milley spoke to that quite forcefully today. >> director clapper, thank you so much for joining us. appreciate your...

Press conference. >> they were talking to the american people but also looked like they were talking almost directly to putin himself. director clapper, we heard the secretary of defense saying putin can choose to de-escalate. he can order troops away. he can choose dialogue and diplomacy and whatever he chooses, the u.s. will be right there with its allies and partners. do you think this will convince putin to stand down? >> well, probably not, but i do think that this was very important session. and i'll just offer a style comment. i thought secretary austin was exhibiting the best character...

A lot of the ukrainian assets just like that. just as we have done. he's watched us. he has got about the same technology now. maybe he wants to do that. the demands he put forward are demands that he knew nato would never agree with. so maybe all along he's been looking for pretext to fight. but it's important that we keep open the opportunity and the effort to reach a diplomatic solution. we do not want conflict in europe. >> we heard secretary milley, general milley that is, talk about, it feels different this time when it comes to what he's seeing in terms of troop movement, the number of ...

Situation from me, not from the intermediaries. >> now the friction there is not really necessarily so much about whether an attack is imminent or further away, although that has played into it. it is really about the use of language, which is causing consternation in the markets here. it's having an economic effect. and it, of course, an economic effect, a weakening of the ukrainian economy that would be part of any russian play in terms of the pressure that it wants to bring on ukraine, on the international community over its attempts to stop ukraine from joining nato. it would also be a pre...