Summary
A senior U.S. defense official said Russian forces have not moved closer to the capital city of Kyiv and are basically where they were yesterday. Russia has seized Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Plant. The White House is now considering a ban on Russian oil imports amid growing bipartisan pressure. Vladimir Putin does these three brazen things on a row: seizes Crimea, boost Assad, helps get Donald Trump elected, all in the span of three years.
Transcript
TIFFANY CROSS, MSNBC HOST: That side indeed. And that`s a nice REIDOUT. Joy returns on Monday. But please do be sure to join me tomorrow morning at 10:00 a.m. Eastern for "THE CROSS CONNECTION." Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal joins me to discuss Russia`s invasion of Ukraine. And I`m also digging deeper into the racist treatment of Black and Brown people as they tried to flee Ukraine.
"ALL IN WITH CHRIS HAYES" starts right now.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CHRIS HAYES, MSNBC HOST (voiceover): Tonight on ALL IN.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It is not only Ukraine under Russian attack, it is Europe, it is the entire world, it is humanity.
HAYES: New alarms across the globe after a Russian attack on a nuclear power prep. And the Ukrainian president rally support in cities across Europe. Tonight, the desperate search to find an off-ramp for Vladimir Putin.
Then, Colonel Alexander Vindman on how the past several years of American politics helped lead to this moment. Plus, what really happens if America cuts off Russian oil?
And the legendary Kareem Abdul-Jabbar on the incredible influence of international sports on war and peace when ALL IN starts right now.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES (on camera): Good evening from New York. I`m Chris Hayes. Today, a senior U.S. defense official said Russian forces have not moved closer to the capital city of Kyiv and are basically where they were yesterday. Adding, Ukraine forces had blown up a Key Bridge halting this massive convoys progress and also directly attack the convoy at other locations.
It is becoming more and more clear that as the Russian military fails to achieve their short term immediate tactical objectives on the ground in Ukraine, it`s taking steps to increase the terror, danger and misery for the civilian population of Ukraine.
Last night, we told you about a Russian attack on the largest nuclear power plant in Europe. Now, Russia has seized that plant that provides a quarter of the electricity for the entire country. Officials say the plant is not currently a threat, but it`s pretty obvious to anyone that thinks about it for about a second that attacking a nuclear power plant is a bad idea.
Today, the U.S. Ambassador the United Nations Linda Thomas Greenfield said, "The World narrowly averted a nuclear catastrophe last night." The Russian military is also ratcheting up the civilian suffering in many other ways local officials in Ukrainian city of Kherson say Russia is not allowing humanitarian corridor to the city. And food and medicine cannot be delivered and civilians cannot evacuate.
Reuters reports, "The southeastern port city of Mariupol`, a key prize to the Russian troops has been encircled and shelled. Its mayor said on Friday, it had no water, heat, or electricity, is running out of food after five days under attack.The Russians have continued shelling civilian areas across Ukraine and doing tremendous damage.
This video is from Kharkiv, Ukraine`s second largest city. It is just a scene of total absolute destruction as you can see. Despite that violence, earlier tonight, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy called for solidarity and a message to anti-war protesters across Europe. This is how it looks to thousands of people gathered in Georgia`s capital city, Tbilisi.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: President Zelenskyy, thank you very much for being here. The whole Europe is watching you. The whole Europe is showing solidarity.
VOLODYMYR ZELENSKY, PRESIDENT, UKRAINE: I would like to call upon you not to be silent. I would like you to come out on the streets and support Ukraine, support our efforts, and support our fight. Because if Ukraine will not stand, Europe will not stand.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: We`re watching an all-out assault on the Ukrainian people and we are left with this situation facing off against what is now quite hostile nuclear power where the only way out of this incredibly dangerous situation is producing some set of costs for Russian President Vladimir Putin that make him decided it`s too costly to continue his war, but that don`t trigger an all-out shooting war between nuclear powers.
But so far, despite the completely unprecedented wave of economic warfare aimed at Putin, he seems at least so far undeterred. And in fact, unnervingly, it seems like the only person in the world who truly wants this war is Vladimir Putin, and that he continues to want it.
French President Emmanuel Macron is the only western leader who has been in constant public contact with Putin since he began his invasion. According to a readout distributed by a French presidential source yesterday, Putin initiated a phone call with Macron where he continued to assert the Russian military was in Ukraine because of the unfairness of the last 30 years that oblige Russia to get rid of the Nazi regime in the Ukraine. That Nazi regime led by the only Jewish head of state outside Israel.
[20:05:07]
A senior French official said it left Macron convinced the worst is yet to come,and that Putin aims to take control of all of Ukraine. That of course, does not sound like a leader looking for a way to de-escalate the situation. Putin has also ratcheted up quite a bit the repression back home in Russia doing everything he can to cut the Russian people off from the reality of the war he is pursuing, enacting a new law to punish anyone spreading "false information about Ukraine invasion with up to 15 years in prison.
This has led to several organizations including the BBC, CNN, and Bloomberg suspending their operations in Russia. Today, Russia also completely blocked access to Facebook and to Twitter. An editor of the BBC pointed it out this way. The Russian government is essentially conducting a huge experiment. Whether you can introduce many of the principal features and characteristics of the 21st century within your state and population, be it connected to the economy or technology and then take them away again.
For average Russian citizens Apple has gone, IKEA gone, can`t use my AmEx, all the normal parts of modern life are gone, vanishing before their eyes. And as maddening as it is to have so much of the fate of humanity at this moment rests in the hands of Vladimir Putin, again, the key now is to produce some kind of diplomatic solution.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has been very clear on this point when he called for face-to-face talks. And that`s why it`s important to send a unified message from the West that there are off-ramps and why the last thing in the universe that you want as a U.S. senator saying the best option is to murder Putin, which is something Republican Senator Lindsey Graham said last night.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM (R-SC): How does this end? Somebody in Russia has to step up to the plate. Is there Brutus in Russia? Is there more successful Colonel Stauffenberg in Russian military? The only way this ends my friend and for somebody in Russia that take this guy out. You would be doing your country a great service and the world a great service.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: Jaw-dropping stuff. You don`t need to say that, Senator. You really don`t. He`s met with swift cross-ideological response because it`s the absolute wrong message. The White House dismissed the idea out of hand. Even Republican Senator Ted Cruz calls it an exceptionally bad idea. I mean, it`s true. Putin really is the problem here. But it`s also true the key unified message about how to get out of this is not to make it seem like regime change is the goal.
Now, Putin may make that impossible. We don`t know. The question becomes, what can be done? What further escalation along the lines of what`s happened already can the West do to change Putin`s calculation without, again, provoking a shooting war with a nuclear power?
NBC News Correspondent Cal Perry joins us live from Lviv in Ukraine with the latest. Cal, get us up to speed in the last 24 hours of this war.
CAL PERRY, NBC NEWS CORRESPONDENT: So, the frontlines haven`t moved in last 24 hours which is bad news for the cities that are under this heavy bombardment. It`s a really a two front where the Russians have opened up. From the south, they`re moving in from Crimea. You mentioned that town of Kherson and the town of Mariupol`. They`ve basically isolated those two cities from the rest of the country.
In the north, they are shelling at least six towns in the northern part of the country. And that`s been going on for 24 hours as well. As they do this, they are surrounding the cities, they are shutting off the power, they`re taking away the water. There is no heat in the city. So, you have civilians who not only can no longer leave, but they`re trapped in bunkers, and it is becoming a deteriorating and unlivable hellish situation, according to the folks who are in these places.
Now, in the capital, you have this convoy. And while it is stalled, it is still slowly making its way, 40 miles long, full of Russian tanks and armor. And look, here in the western part of the country, we continue to see that stream of refugees.
The United Nations saying now more than 1.2 million people have left this country. The World Food Program is on the ground here now as well. They`re looking to make a move towards Kyiv as well as the United Nations. It just gives you an indication that the Russians are now carrying out this modus operandi, these attacks on civilian populations. It`s similar to what we saw in cities like Aleppo.
And as you start to see these drone footages of the city slowly be flattened, people here are wondering if that`s not what we`re going to be talking about. If we`re not eventually going to speak about Kyiv the way that we spoke about Aleppo as again, it is this very crude method of war of surrounding the civilian populations and basically bombing them, Chris, into submission.
HAYES: Cal Perry, really, really chilling stuff. Thank you for your reporting and please stay safe.
I`d like to bring in Julia Ioffe. She is a founding partner and Washington Correspondent for Puck News. Her latest piece on the Ukrainian invasion is titled Europe`s 9/11.
Julia, I`ve been -- I`ve been reading you religiously throughout this and you`ve been talking about your interactions with friends of yours in in Russia. And I wanted to start a little bit of just the shock and the reverberation of what the way that BBC News night editor put it of just the experiment of plugging your country into the global economy, the global technological matrix, basically, and then unplugging it in a matter of days, shutting it all down. What that means for Russia, what it means for Russians.
[20:10:25]
JULIA IOFFE, WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT, PUCK NEWS: Nothing good, unfortunately. And I think the BBC correspondent is exactly right but he may be kind of understating it. Moscow, for example, was so far ahead of cities like New York and DC and LA and London.
I mean, it was one of the cities where you could pay with Apple Pay in a little Bodega somewhere, you know, years before we could do that here. It was a thing -- some -- a place where everything was online. It was a very easy city to live in because of all these technological advances. And now, you can`t even use credit cards. My friends can`t withdraw their money from ATMs.
But the issue now is, I don`t have many friends left in Russia. They`ve all fled. Almost everybody has fled. A friend crossed to Estonia last night on foot in the middle of the night in part because all the flights are sold out. Their stories going around about you know, 5000 Euro tickets from Moscow to Istanbul one way.
There are reports coming out that the FSB is pulling people aside at the border crossings, or rather, in airports and not letting people on planes, pulling them aside for hours, long questioning, searching their electronics, asking how they feel about Putin and the war in Ukraine, which of course, they don`t call a war.
So, people are starting to drive wherever they can. It`s just -- I mean, he`s plunging the country back into what it was under the USSR, you know, this impoverished, disconnected hermit kingdom. And it is tragic, it is obviously far less tragic than what he`s doing to Ukraine, which he wants clearly dead or alive. But he`s doing a lot of damage to Russia as well and, you know, cutting people off from information.
I have to say, by the way, this new law that gives people 15 -- up to 15 years in prison for, "fake news about the war," fake news being anything that doesn`t come directly from the Ministry of Defense. Russia is not the U.S. 15 years sentences are unheard of. That is a very, very long sentence by Russian standards.
You know, people go to go to jail for like five to eight years for murder. So, this is -- this is really extreme and kind of Stalin-esque.
HAYES: Yes. I mean, that part of it, the speed with which a sort of authoritarian but kind of globalized society, right, plugged into Apple Pay, you know, a nominally independent press, which, of course is constantly watching the specter of you know, the Russian security forces but is operating in some degree of, you know, something past what it was under Stalin. Like watching this hammer come down today on the press where it`s just like, we`re not even going to pretend anymore, essentially.
IOFFE: That`s right. And I have to say, what was left of the press until this last week was not a lot to begin with. He really cracked down on the press in the last year after Alexei Navalny came back from Germany where he was being treated for novichok poisoning.
And when he came back and called people out into the streets, Putin said, absolutely not and started cracking down on civil society, on NGOs, on the press. A lot of people fled then, a lot of news organizations closed up shop or really had to let go of a lot of staff. And these were the last holdouts. These were kind of the bravest of the brave.
And you know, a lot of these people that you`re -- you know, you`re showing these photographs like, of that radio station, that`s my friend in that photo. You know, these are -- a lot of these are my friends. And they were doing this -- continuing to do this at great risk to themselves when they could have made a lot more money in the private sector. They really believed in what they were doing.
They hold on -- they hold these values that we spread around the world -- trumpet around the world a lot more dearly than we do because they have to fight for them every day. And now they`ve -- they had to give up and leave. And that`s been just soul-crushing for a lot of them. They didn`t want to leave their country. They wanted to make it better.
And for a lot of them, it was, you know, either stay and get closed in by this new iron curtain or try to make a life elsewhere.
HAYES: Julia Ioffe who again has been utterly indispensable throughout this entire dark, dark chapter, thank you very much. I appreciate it.
[20:15:02]
IOFFE: Thank you.
HAYES: Still ahead, President Biden is facing mounting pressure from Congress to ban Russian oil. What would that mean for the U.S. next?
Plus, my interview with the legendary Kareem Abdul-Jabbar on the way the sports community can influence Putin war. All that more coming up. Stick around.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
HAYES: One sector of the Russian economy that`s basically been spared in the sanctions from the U.S. and the EU is the energy sector. That could be about to change though. The White House is now considering a ban on Russian oil imports amid growing bipartisan pressure. But oil prices are already spiking, nearing record highs. Russia is currently the third-largest supplier of oil in the world, and the second-largest supplier of natural gas. The question is what would a U.S. ban on Russian oil mean for everyone involved?
Here to walk us through that, independent oil trader, energy markets expert Dan Dicker. Dan, I`m so glad to have you on because every time I think I have my arms around the oil markets, they defy my logic. So, first, let`s start with this. You`ve seen oil prices spiking in the wake of the crisis despite the fact that very, very intentionally, all the economic transactions around oil were carved out. So, why are we seeing this spike even if the Russians can, at least under the law, still sell their oil?
DAN DICKER, INDEPENDENT OIL TRADER AND ENERGY MARKETS EXPERT: Yes, there`s -- what there is, is there`s a -- there`s a threat. And that`s what really drives the markets all the time. It`s not really -- there`s no shortage right now. But there is a threat of a shortage, which happens when you curtail the ability of Russia to sell.
So, if -- remember, Russia is a petrol state. Fully 40 percent of their revenues come from oil and gas. And if you`re going to make sanctions stick, sooner or later, you`re going to have to make them stick somehow through oil and gas. And it doesn`t really matter whether you don`t deny completely oil from Russia being sold somewhere.
But if you curtail it, if you find a way to ban it here in the United States as they`ve been doing slowly but surely in Europe, even not in the governmental way -- you know, we can talk about that, but if you ban their ability to sell it on open free markets, they have to go to secondary markets. They`ll go to China, they go to India, and then they have to sell at discounted prices because they`re not really in the, you know, on the 1mainstream of the economy anymore. And then you put sanctions on where the finances are hindere1d, so that the transfer of capital becomes more difficult. All of this hits home in a way that will really make a difference in applying sanctions to Russia.
Remember, the tanks that are rolling through Ukraine streets right now were bought with the Euros. Seven million barrels of oil a day is sold to Europe, the nine million barrels that Russia makes. The oligarchs, those yachts that you see that they`re trying to to seize, those were all bought with euros.
Ultimately, if you want to have an impact economically, if the sanctions are going to have real bite, really going to make a difference, really bankrupt Putin, somewhere, you`re going to have to get to oil and gas. So, this ban from the America -- it`s only a token thing in the United States. It will make gas prices rise. There`s no doubt about that.
But think of it in this country as our way to contributes to what will be, you know, stopping a murderer from running through the streets of Ukraine.
HAYES: Well, but here`s the question. I mean, I guess two things. One is -- right, so your point is that this would be efficacious insofar as it really would have an effect on the balance sheet and the ability of this sort of economic engine of Russia.
DICKER: It makes -- it makes a statement where everybody is now ready to follow suit. The Europeans will have some support on where they can get some supplies to supplant the Russian barrels that they say that they won`t buy. All of this makes a statement that we`re coming for, what is the most important part of your economy, and that is oil and gas.
HAYES: And finally, I mean, how high does it get? Are we talking like $8.00 a gallon, $10.00? I mean, there`s -- like, that`s the question, right?
DICKER: I suppose that`s a question. I will say that this economy in the United States has dealt with $5.00 and $6.00 a gallon gas, you know, not that long ago, and we`re capable of doing that. But where it actually leads, yes, I would say that, you know, we`re headed for $5.00 or $6.00 gas in any case. And I would say we were headed there even without this geopolitical stuff.
We`ve had an energy sector that`s been decimated for the past five, six years. And they cannot respond to the demand that`s coming in for fossil fuels right now anyway. So, this only makes things a heck of a lot worse. But I think that this economy can manage it. It`s done so in the past. And again, when we`re looking at the stakes here, it seems like a small price today.
HAYES: All right, Dan Dicker, thank you very much. I appreciate that.
Next, I want to take a step back to understand how it is that Ukraine, this one country in Europe, its conflict with Russia became a central axis of American political life, particularly during the Trump years. The whole story after this.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[20:25:00]
HAYES: Before the Russian invasion, Ukraine was home to about 44 million people, roughly the same as Spain. It`s one of the largest countries by landmass, not population on the European continent. So, it`s a big and important place. But it`s not the kind of place that would normally be at the center of U.S. politics, except it very much has been for years. Ukraine has occupied an outsized role in American political discourse.
Just look at a guy like Paul Manafort. You might remember him. Back in 2016, he was named Chairman of the Trump Campaign and chief strategist. He was one of many members of a rotating cast of grifters and yes-men who surrounded then-candidate Trump.
Manafort, though, was a veteran political operative, who got his start in the 1970s working with the likes of self-proclaimed dirty trickster Roger Stone, and Lee Atwater, the late Republican hatchet man behind the wildly racist Willie Horton ad of the 1988 presidential campaign.
And then Manafort`s career took a bit of a turn. He started making living a lucrative one by advising and lobbying on behalf of dictators and strong men. In the early 2000s, he started working for Russian President Vladimir Putin`s puppet candidate to lead Ukraine, a guy named Viktor Yanukovych.
[20:30:01]
Now, Yanukovych had tried to steal the presidential election in Ukraine October 2004. Through stuffed ballot boxes and voter intimidation. And his opponent the pro-Ukraine guy was even poisoned apparently by Russian agents. Remember that his face became disfigured.
[20:30:19]
HAYES: And all of that, the McCobb (PH) spectacle, the face disfigurement led to a popular uprising in Ukraine known as the Orange Revolution, and it brought Viktor Yanukovych down. It handed the election to the legitimate winner and it was around this time that Yanukovych hired Paul Manafort.
Manafort was assisted by a political operative named Konstantin Kilimnik, who U.S. investigators say as a Russian intelligence official, and was integral to Manafort dealings in Ukraine and Russia.
Manafort then gave the Ukrainian Putin candidate a complete political makeover. Dressing him like a more traditional politician, quite hair, nice suits.
Manafort taught the candidate how to mind empathy when speaking to voters, how to modulate his voice when giving speeches.
As journalists Franklin Foer reported in Slate, "One Ukrainian communist cheekily asked his readers to identify the 10 elements of Yanukovych`s rallies that Manafort had imported from the Republican conventions he`d run.
And guess what, their work paid off. The Putin puppet Viktor Yanukovych won the Ukrainian presidency in 2010. In an election that was still tainted by allegations of corruption, but it did look like he really won.
And things are going fine for this new Putin-approved president for a few years until 2013. And that`s why Yanukovych refused to sign this trade agreement with the European Union, opting instead to align Ukraine closer with guested Russia.
And this decision, along with a naked corruption of Yanukovych and his cronies, sparked massive protests across the country spanning multiple months.
Yanukovych was eventually forced out of office as a result, eventually fleeing in the middle of the night to Russia in early 2014.
Putin was not happy, he had lost his puppet president and there were huge pro-democracy protests next door. This was a seismic moment for the Russian president and you can see that in three brazen geopolitical moves that he made afterwards.
The first thing he did was to seize Crimea from Ukraine. Almost immediately after those pro-democracy protests in Ukraine, Putin sent armed soldiers his little green men into Crimea, no flags on their uniforms, they occupied government buildings and Russian forces quickly to control.
It was up until that point, the largest European land grabs since World War II. And Putin basically got away with it. There was international condemnation and some sanctions but nothing close to the outcry we`re seeing today.
That leads us to the second brazen thing he did. In 2015, Putin deployed official Russian troops outside the former Soviet republics for the first time since the end of the Cold War. He sent troops to intervene in Syria, and they are still there today to keep Bashar al-Assad in power.
That intervention was incredibly expensive and brutal, but essentially decisive. Putin managed to secure the victory he wanted, and Assad has stayed in power.
That same year in 2015, Donald Trump announced his run for president and right before the RNC, where he will accept the party nomination, Trump hires Paul Manafort to come run his campaign for free. Manafort the guy who got Putin`s puppet elected in Ukraine is now in charge of the Trump campaign.
And during Manafort`s short tenure, the campaign altered the official Republican platform, to tone down its support for military assistance to Ukraine, which in no uncertain terms was a direct gift and signal to Russia. And Trump`s own ties, Russian money started coming under scrutiny.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
NORAH O`DONNELL, CBS NEWS ANCHOR: So, to be clear, Mr. Trump has no financial relationships with any Russian oligarchs?
PAUL MANAFORT, FORMER TRUMP PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN: That`s what he said. That`s what I said. That`s obviously what our position is.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: Convincing. As campaign manager Paul Manafort also stayed in contact with that alleged Russian operative Konstantin Kilimnik, who many suspected was just a direct link between the campaign and Russian intelligence.
The two men would later go on to cook up this bizarre plot, where the Eastern Ukrainian territory of Donbas, now the target of Putin`s invasion or the place where the war started, because it never really stopped. That the Donbas would break off into its own pro-Russia country, possibly under the rule of disgraced Putin backed former Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych.
Now, Manafort was ultimately ousted from the Trump campaign, after his obvious corruption and ties to Russia were too much even for them. Which brings us back to Putin and his third incredibly brazen act, and that is interfering in the 2016 U.S. election in a pretty profound way.
It is, of course impossible to measure the impact of Russia`s hacking leak disinformation campaign, but regardless, Putin again got his desired outcome. Donald Trump in probably elected president.
So, think about it, after the Maidan, after you Ukraine pulls away from Russia, kicking out his (INAUDIBLE), Putin does these three incredibly brazen things on a row and they all work out surprisingly well. Seizes Crimea, boost Assad, helps get Donald Trump elected, all in the span of three years.
[20:35:13]
HAYES: Now, he has an ally in Donald Trump, which is of course incredibly important, because Vladimir Putin doesn`t really have so-called soft power to pressure foreign policy aside from natural gas and oil.
Well, that can be very influential. It`s not the same kind of soft power the U.S. and NATO and others can wield in different parts of the world. But Trump becomes Putin`s soft power.
We see it play out in all kinds of ways like pushing the leader of Montenegro out of the way at a NATO meeting and repeating the weird Russian line about Montenegro starting World War III by joining NATO.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Montenegro is a tiny country with very strong people. I`m not against that, right. We`re Albania.
Tucker Carlson, Fox News Channel host: Yes, I`m not against it or Albania.
TRUMP: By the way, they`re very strong people. They are very aggressive people. They may get aggressive, and congratulations, you`re in World War III.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: That was Trump repeating Moscow`s position basically verbatim. Just like the way Trump would work to delegitimize NATO as a deadbeat alliance taking advantage of the U.S.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: You know, I went to NATO where we were being ripped off because the other countries, you have 29 countries and the other countries weren`t paying their bills. They were delinquent. You know, in real estate. I noticed people using that word. I`ve been using it for the last year. It`s like a real estate term, that`s when they don`t pay their rent.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: Putin`s influence could also be seen in the centrality of Ukraine in Trump`s attacks on Hunter Biden, which of course undermine the country`s legitimacy highlighted it`s very real and rampant political corruption, culminating of course in Trump`s first impeachment for threatening to withhold military aid from Ukrainian President Zelensky unless he helped dig up dirt on the Bidens.
In simpler terms, Trump helped legitimize Putin, elevate his status in the world stage, undermine NATO.
So, when Republican politicians say that Putin would not have invaded Ukraine under Trump, they are probably right but for the wrong reasons. Putin likely would not have invaded because he did not need to because Trump was his ultimate gift doing everything Putin himself wanted to do, elevating Russia, denigrating NATO, delegitimizing Ukraine.
Without him in the White House, Putin took matters into his own hands, invading Ukraine, putting the country once again at the center of U.S. politics.
One of the men who bravely stood up for Ukraine during the Trump administration is next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[20:41:31]
HAYES: Donald Trump is the only U.S. president ever been impeached twice. The reason he was impeached the first time was Ukraine, specifically his attempt to blackmail the new president of Ukraine on a phone call by threatening to withhold military aid unless he launched an investigation into the Bidens and that the conspiracy theories about the 2016 election, the "do us a favor though moment".
Then, National Security Council Official Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman was listening in on that call and testified about it to Congress.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
LT. COL. ALEXANDER VINDMAN, FORMER DIRECTOR FOR EUROPEAN AFFAIRS, U.S. NATIONAL SECURITY COUNCIL: Frankly, I couldn`t believe what I was hearing. It was probably an element of shock, that maybe in certain regards my worst fear of how our Ukraine policy could play out was playing out, and how this was likely to have significant implications for U.S. national security.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And you went immediately and you reported it, didn`t you?
VINDMAN: I did.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Why?
VINDMAN: Because that was my duty.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: And Colonel Vindman joins me now. It`s good to have you, Colonel.
How do you think about the connection between the central -- Putin`s obsession with Ukraine and its internality and his thinking? And this internality is played in American politics through the sort of person of Trump in the last four or five years?
VINDMAN: Well, there`s a direct connection, frankly, I think, certainly as Vladimir Putin is taking the temperature on whether to conduct the offensive, he`s taking his cues from U.S. leadership, the former president who`s captured the Republican Party, and determining whether there`s going to be a resistance or whether there`s going to be a high cost.
I listened to your previous segment. And then, frankly, I`m on defense as to whether Donald -- whether Putin would have attempted to launch this war against Ukraine.
On the one hand, why buy the cow when you get the milk for free? Donald Trump would have broken up NATO and then, frankly, Putin could have went after the Baltics first and signal that there was more coming.
On the other hand, he could have done this campaign as he`s doing now, and let the accolades roll in from Donald Trump as they have.
But frankly, Donald Trump and his administration is part of a long preface to how we ended up with this war. There were -- there were multiple administration`s that mismanaged Vladimir Putin, who is cold and calculating KGB officer that pandered to hopes and used fear. Those two kind of primary tools, and where we were kind of inching across towards a greater risk of confrontation as Putin felt he was at -- he -- there was no consequence for his actions. And we were inching along at the other administrations during the Trump administration we lurch forward, we lurched towards where we are today because of the divisive nature of the Trump administration, between us and our NATO alliance between within our own society with the insurrection, the buildup, you have to remember started occurring just weeks after the President Trump`s insurrection on January 6th.
So, I think it was a significant contributing factor. And it was a significant contributing factor in the days closing in on this war, when President Biden was attempting to deter Vladimir Putin saying the sanctions were serious.
On the other hand, Putin was signaling -- sorry, Trump was signaling no, nt going to be a big deal, you`re a brilliant man, Vladimir Putin. And the Republicans were slow-rolling sanctions.
[20:45:07]
VINDMAN: So, the Republican Party and Donald Trump had blood on their hands, they nudged us towards this confrontation that`s not just about Ukraine, the largest country in Europe. It`s about U.S. national security, because the Russia, the largest country in the world, attacking the largest country in Europe does not stay limited.
The chances of that happening are pretty limited -- are just not realistic. Then, you have your head in your sand if you think that`s not going to happen, whether that`s in the economic sphere, political sphere, or maybe even the military sphere in the worst-case scenario.
HAYES: Well, you -- obviously you had a Russia, I think and Ukraine as part of your portfolio when you were in the National Security Council and have thought a lot about this. There`s debate now about what Putin is doing here. And what pressure can be brought to bear to avoid a shooting war or a nuclear war, you know, between two nuclear powers, but to get him to stop cut his losses.
And there`s some thinking that he`s just past any kind of rational calculation of interest, what`s your thinking?
VINDMAN: So, that`s not true. Let`s start with the valid premise that Vladimir Putin is not suicidal, he doesn`t want to end his own life or the existence of the Russian Federation. So, mutually assured destruction holds.
Let`s also take the valid premise that the way that the Russian military is performed in Ukraine doubles down on this desire to avoid a confrontation with the United States and with NATO.
So, if we accept those two, we need to account for accidents and miscalculations. But that gives us a lot of room to maneuver and support Ukraine and its struggle for sovereignty and maintaining its independence.
So, part of that is in the economic sphere we`re doing -- we`re doing a lot but we`re not doing enough. We need to stop the energy trade. That`s something that`s bearable. It`s not outside the boundaries of what`s realistic.
And we need to -- we need to stop thinking about trickling in weapons into Ukraine. We need to build depots on the -- on the NATO side of the border. And we need to feed in as much weaponry as the Ukrainians could use.
It`s a lendlease of sorts that we used in World War II. If they want it, we give it to them. That`s the anti-tank, the air defense, and frankly, we should be giving them what are called UCAVs, unmanned combat aerial vehicles. s
The Turks already do it, they give them TB2s, the drones that have been so effective in Ukraine destroying Russian equipment. We -- so, that`s -- there`s -- it`s precedented. We should give them that equipment so they even up the score with a Russia that has a very, very powerful Air Force, and has been firing rockets with impunity from across the border.
HAYES: All right, Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman, thank you so much.
VINDMAN: Thank you.
HAYES: Coming up, as FIFA and the Olympics take action, basketball legend Kareem Abdul-Jabbar on the power the international sports community has to influence Putin`s war, he joins me next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[20:52:37]
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: As you see all the players draped in the flag of Ukraine. The 22 years old former Dynamo Kyiv player, the Everton captain tonight, Vitaliy Mykolenko.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: From soccer to hockey to basketball, all around the world, athletes and fans are rallying around Ukraine, as the international sports world imposes their own sanctions against the invasion.
The International Paralympic Committee banned Russian and Belarusian athletes from participating in those games which started today.
On Monday, FIFA and the Champions League suspended all Russian International and club soccer teams.
Formula 1 racing canceled competitions held in Russia or Belarus and banned both countries flags and anthems.
The International Tennis Federation suspended both countries from membership or participation. Even EA Sports announced that in solidarity with Ukrainian people would remove the Russian national team and Russian clubs from the FIFA 2022 video game.
NBA legend former Los Angeles Lakers Kareem Abdul-Jabbar says he`s glad to see the sports world stepping up. Writing earlier this week that by banning all Russian teams from competing in any international sports, we are affirming that Russia`s exceptions are un -- actions are unacceptable, that anyone representing their country even though the athletes may be innocent pawns will not be welcomed.
And Kareem Abdul-Jabbar joins me now.
I really liked what you had to -- what you had to write about the power here and it`s remarkable to see the scenes across the world. We realize that sports is so much of how these issues might come into people`s lives or how they might think of them first and foremost because sports fans are so enthusiastic, what do you see as the role of sports bodies first and foremost in this conflict?
KAREEM ABDUL-JABBAR, COLUMNIST, SUBSTACK: Well, it`s nice to be with you, Chris. I think the people around the world that are a sports enthusiast can add to the pressure that everybody`s trying to apply to the Russian harm -- the horrible actions of the Russian state.
And, you know, sports is usually something that teaches you about fair play, teamwork, and it extends the limits of human performance in you know, these world records that are set during many of these games.
[20:55:04]
ABDUL-JABBAR: So, you know, we have to rein that in, because these totalitarian countries are just using it as propaganda for their way of life. And we see what their way of life has ended up. It`s horrible what we`re seeing going on in Russia.
HAYES: Do you think there`s a distinction between athletes like Russian athletes who may be competing, and an official say Russian national teams and things like FIFA are holding events in Russia? Because I think there`s an argument you made that you know, Russian athletes can`t control what their government does. We saw that one Russian tennis player very bravely write no to war on the -- on the camera lens.
How do you think about that distinction between those two?
ABDUL-JABBAR: Well, I think the ordinary Russian citizen, which includes athletes, they have something to say in this. Of course, the people in charge aren`t listening to them. But they have something to say, the world is seeing that they too condemn what`s going on.
So, that encourages the people in Ukraine and hopefully, it will help them make the points that they need to make against the Russian government.
HAYES: The other argument on the other side, right, is that and you see this with the Olympics, right? This always gets very fraught in the Olympics, because all kinds of countries participate in the Olympics with all kinds of countries with different regimes doing all kinds of things, right?
And there`s this idea that actually, you know, contrary to what you`re arguing, it should be the opposite that sports particularly things like the Olympics and the Paralympics should be distinguished from the politics of these regimes as a place for people to come together across lines of difference. What do you think of that argument?
ABDUL-JABBAR: Well, I think athletes have something to say. And when they get together and promote something, whatever it is, like in 1984, the United States did not go to the Olympics. And we thought we had good reasons to do that. So, it I think it all depends.
People weren`t getting murdered and killed in the streets by, you know, a modern armed forces. That that -- there`s a big difference between what was happening then, and what`s happening now, you know, what we`re seeing in the streets of the Ukrainian cities is horrific.
HAYES: Do you think the cessation of sports and that sort of just continuation of it knowing that, you know, I mean, FIFA, for instance, is huge deal, right? The entire world follows the World Cup, that that will have reverberations with a populace that will be -- being sent some kind of message that may be outside of what they`re learning from state media.
ABDUL-JABBAR: I think it adds pressure. And all the pressure we can put on Russia to stop this, is necessary, this is something that must end.
So, you know, we have to use the feelings and thoughts of all segments of society and that includes athletes.
HAYES: I want to play something about Alexander Ovechkin who`s a very, very, very acclaimed hockey player in the National Hockey League. He`s from Russia, has been quite a big outspoken supporter of Vladimir Putin through the years, has been asked about to sort of make comments on this.
And, you know, I go back and forth on whether it`s fair to ask athletes to sort of answer for their country and I thought this response from him was interesting and perhaps telling. I`m curious to get your reaction, take a listen to what he said.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ALEXANDER OVECHKIN, CAPTAIN, WASHINGTON CAPITALS: I`m Russian, right? Sometimes, like -- it`s something I can`t control. You know, it`s not in my hands. How I say, like, I hope it`s going to end soon and there`s going to be peace in both countries. And you know, I don`t -- I don`t control this one.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: Why do you think of that?
ABDUL-JABBAR: Well, I think, you know, Alexander suggested that the NHL deny payment to the Russian hockey players and we can`t punish all -- you know, all Russians for the actions of the government leadership.
But you know, we can support them in their protests and you know, make it possible for them to be visible and heard. We can do that and I think that will have an effect.
HAYES: Yes, that was Dominik Hasek actually who had recommend the NHL subpoena -- the suspending contract for all Russian players, saying that every athlete represents not only themselves but also the nation they come from.
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, what a pleasure to have you, Sir. Thank you very much.
[21:00:05]
ABDUL-JABBAR: It was great talking with you.
HAYES: Be well.
That is ALL IN for this week, "THE RACHEL MADDOW" show starts now with Ayman Mohyeldin. Good evening, Ayman.